Remembering You
by America's Got Fandom
Summary: After arriving on the scene of Emmet's car crash, Lucy passes out from shock. While Emmet wakes up with physical injuries, Lucy wakes up without her memory of her boyfriend. Can Emmet rebuild his relationship with Lucy, or are they doomed to go their separate ways as if they had never met? Emmetstyle and some Benny x Sweet Mayhem.
1. Forgetting You

**A/N: Hi! Thanks for clicking! So, I've had this idea in my head for quite a while, I just wasn't planning on making it a Lego Movie fanfic. But now I am! Yay! This is set post-Lego Movie Two and will obviously contain spoilers. This story contains medical stuff, and while I did research, things may not be totally accurate, so please bear with me. Read this as you want, humanized, not, etc. To anyone following Redamancy; I'm still continuing with that collection, I plan to take it to at least 25, more if asked. Enjoy, and THANKS!**

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_July 13__th__, 2 years after Lego Movie 2…_

Sleeping. That's how Emmet and Lucy were spending the slow Sunday morning. The sun was hardly awake, and it seemed the birds, squirrels, and all creatures of nature were following in the example. The TV, the proud soldier that had been fighting throughout the night, played _Charade _on loop as its masters lay on the couch in quiet, soft slumber.

_"Do you, Lucy Emerald, take Emmet Brickowski to be your lawfully wedded husband?"_

_Lucy smiled from across Emmet, taking his hands in hers. "I do."_

**Beep…Beep…**

The ringtone, blaring in her ears like an uninvited in-law, threatened to tear her from her dream. She fought it and clenched her eyes shut. She would not let the phone bring her out of her sweet trance.

_"You may now kiss the bride."_

Her favorite part. Burying deeper into her boyfriend's embrace, she let her fantasy overtake her mind once more.

_Emmet's smile, wide and earnest, covered her own as he pulled her into a kiss. She closed her eyes as he leaned slowly arched her back, the crown cheering around them…_

**Beep…Beep…**

"Ugh…Emmet…" Lucy's hand weighed a thousand pounds as she lifted it out from under the thick, heated blanket and towards where her exhausted mind assumed his phone was. "Shut your phone off, I wanna sleep." Too tired to move it, she gave up and left her arm laying across his chest.

Her weariness could not prevent her smile as her boyfriend's arms curled around her, pulling her close against his chest. "Morning, Lucy." He pressed a soft kiss on the top of her head.

Warmth left her, for a moment, when he removed one of his arms from her body. "Mmph…" she voiced her displeasure, and he returned it quickly, cuddling around her once more.

The void where the sound of the TV had been was filled by his voice. "Sorry, I turned off the TV."

**Beep…Beep…**

Emmet groaned at the pest. Couldn't his phone leave him and his girlfriend alone for five minutes?

He reached behind him to grab his phone, but Lucy finally woke herself up enough to snatch it from him. "No," she commanded, laying back on top of him with the phone wrapped in her hoodie. "If you look, it will probably be work, or someone asking for help. If you don't look at the phone, you don't leave." Her simple explanation wore her out, and she curled again underneath the blankets. If anyone ever saw her acting so sappy, she'd probably flush like a red crayon. Emmet, and only Emmet, could see her so vulnerable.

The quick rise and fall of his chest was more comforting than a lullaby. "What if it is work?" His voice, tinted with a mischievous, playful air, warned her she should hide the phone better.

Lucy considered his counter for a moment. "I won't let you leave."

"How do you plan to do that?"

The teasing question was more than enough to wake her up. Turning to face him and finally opening her eyes to the sunlight, she gave him a small smile. "Well…" She propped herself up, twirling and playing with his ruffled bedhead hair. "…I could do this."

He knew what was coming, and successfully caught her lips in his own as she jolted forward, passionately kissing him as her means of persuasion.

He held her close against him, noting the delicate taste of chocolate on her lips. Work could wait, she was all he needed.

**Beep…Beep…**

**"Hi, Emmet!"**

Pulling back from his girlfriend, Emmet groaned at the muffled voicemail recording. He didn't dare try to find the phone Lucy had buried so artfully, instead listening with one ear as Lucy started kissing him again.

**"It's Gail, we need you down here. I know it's Sunday, but it won't take long. It's about the new waterpark. We could really use a Master Builder!"**

Lucy ignored the phone and its unpleasant messages, pressing herself forward to kiss her boyfriend harder, deeper, longer.

**"Anyway, I know you're there. I'll see you here in a half an hour, then you can go back to, uh, whatever you're doing. BYE!"**

"You're not going," Lucy informed him with a full kiss. "You're staying here, they can build that stupid waterpark without you."

Emmet wholeheartedly agreed with his girlfriend, but his sense of right-and-wrong and unbreakable appreciation for duty had a strong hold over him. "I'll be right back, I promise."

Groaning, she fell back on top of his warm chest. "No, I want you to stay."

"I don't want to go."

"Then don't."

"I have to."

She smirked, propping herself up once more. "Sometimes I wish you weren't so good." Her words were a mere, fleeting mumble, but they read into her deepest desire to have her near him always.

The forlorn expression on her face moved him to give her a gentle kiss. "I'll be back _really _quick, then we can watch _North by Northwest._" Their precious secret love of old romance movies never failed to make her smile; they mystery was just for the two of them, a special gem only they had the key to.

She broke into a smile. "Alright. Go get out of your pajamas, I'll see you in a bit."

"Thanks!" He graced her with a gentle kiss, untangling himself from her grasp. "Love you, I'll be back to say bye in a minute."

"Kay," she replied. Propping herself up on the couch, she watched her boyfriend walk up the stairs, barely aware of the soft smile on her lips. Goodness, the effect he had on her.

After he was long gone upstairs, Lucy reached down to the floor to grab her phone. If she had nothing planned for the day, it was a good day. Her mind was already racing with ideas and plans of all the fun things she and her boyfriend could do, and they were only amplified when her planner app told her she had the whole day free.

Yawning and stretching beneath the cavern of blankets and pillows, she admired their setup from the night before. Saturdays were movie nights, consequently the nights Unikitty spent over at Sweet Mayhem's place.

Blankets were piled high above, around, and underneath her, spreading from the couch sprawling out like a nuke had hit. Candy wrappers, popcorn, and soda cans sprinkled across the floor, mixed in with DVDs of animation movies and romantic comedies, along with the occasional thriller or horror movie. Watching those gave her a nice excuse to hold her boyfriend as tight as she could, not that she really needed one.

"I'm back!" Emmet announced, barreling down the stairs to greet her in his neon orange uniform. "You want me to make breakfast before I leave?"

Hopping off the couch, she walked in a leisurely pace to her boyfriend. "No, I'll make it later." She moved her hands up his arms to his shoulders before gently kissing him. "Love you," she murmured, still hanging onto the chance he would drop work and stay with her.

The temptation was there, especially when she pressed him against the wall as a means of deepening the kiss. "Luuucy…" he whined, breaking the kiss for a moment. "You're making this _really _hard!"

Seeing that she was gaining some ground, she nodded and kissed him again. "That's the point."

**Beep…Beep…**

"Ugh…" Lucy groaned. "Fine, fine, you can have him." She played with the edges of his vest, muttering under her breath about Gail. "She better not look at you while you're there."

Emmet giggled. "Don't worry, she doesn't stand a chance. I'll see you later, ok? I love you." He gave her a long kiss that lasted his whole walk backwards to the door.

"Love you," Lucy replied, a smile that was both lovesick and routine on her face. She watched as her boyfriend smiled, turned, walked out, and shut the door with a soft _click._

She smiled. The wonders that man did to her.

#

Lucy walked from the living room to the kitchen, possibly in the best mood she had been in for a while. Waking up and just relaxing with her boyfriend, not to mention having the whole day ahead with him, just gave her heart a little jolt. She had _never_ felt this way around Batman, or any other boyfriend of hers. There was no question, Emmet was the one for her.

Speaking of an oh-so-familiar phrase, she smiled at the thought of a wedding. She didn't know anything yet, but the other day she did catch him peeking at an engagement ring store while she was buying coffee, and she could only draw one conclusion from that.

"Hey, Wyldstyle!" Unikitty greeted, walking in the door with a cheerful tint to her voice. "Where's Emmet?"

Grabbing a donut, or, as Lucy called it, breakfast, she replied, "He had to go to work. Want breakfast?"

Unikitty deadpanned. "Are donuts 'breakfast'?"

"Yes."

Unikitty licked her lips as her eyes burst open with sparkles, glitter, and fireworks. "In that case, YES." She accepted the plate of chocolate and strawberry donuts that Lucy offered. "Let me guess, you let Emmet go without making breakfast?"

She rolled her eyes. "I can make breakfast, too."

Unikitty's smirk was answer enough. "Tell me when _you_ make a buffet of waffles, pancakes, eggs, and steak, all before we wake up. On a _Monday_ morning."

Now, if anyone had ever auditioned for a Bed-and-Breakfast cooking show, Emmet could teach them a lesson in cooking the first meal of the day. "Fine, so I'm not the master, but I know how to save donuts from the night before."

"Obviously," Unikitty said with a mouthful of sugary, cakey sweetness.

**Beep...Beep...**

Lucy groaned. The phones in their house must have had it out for them.

Without looking at the name, Lucy slid her phone open and answered it. "Hello?"

"Is this Lucy Emerald?" The voice sounded official.

A weight dropped to Lucy's stomach as she gave Unikitty a worried look. "Yes, what's wrong?"

The voice answered immediately. "Ma'am, you need to get to Brick Road right away, Emmet Brickowski has been in a car crash."

No.

No, no, no. "He's...no, is he alright?" Her words came out in one breath.

"We can give you more information when you get here."

"I'm...I'm on my way." She hung up and grabbed Unikitty. "Unikitty, Emmet...he's..."

Unikitty stopped her roommate from going any farther at the door. "Lucy, what is it? You _sound_ pale. Is Emmet alright?"

Lucy swallowed the lump in her throat. Her vision was shifting from left to right, bouncing around and blurring like rain on sidewalk chalk. "He...car crash..."

Unikitty shook her head. "No... ok, you're not driving, you'll pass out at the wheel." Adrenaline pumping, she tore out of the house with Lucy, and they dashed into the car.

Lucy had left her heart with Emmet when he left, and she was too afraid to find out if his heart was still beating.

#

Unikitty skidded to a stop at Brick Road, her breath tearing from her grasp at the sight.

Lucy nearly ripped the door off as she thrashed from the car and crashed by Emmet's side.

He looked as though he was at death's door.

Blood drizzled and gushed from twenty places. His leg, shredded and torn, exposed a fragment of bone while blood surged onto the pavement. It was hardly hanging onto his body, and Lucy lost her lungs at the sight. He groaned and withered, clutching his stomach as he lay on the stretcher. Paramedics buzzed from him to a man by a truck and everywhere in-between, but Lucy's concentration was only on her boyfriend.

"Emmet..." she griped his hand, covering hers in blood. The liquid, slipping between their hands, caused her every reason to wince.

His eyelids weighed tens of thousands of pounds, but for her, he tried to open them. At the mere sight of his girlfriend, a small smile managed to find its way onto his face, despite his condition. "Hey, Luc-Lucy." He chuckled, wincing, and letting out a groan. "Heh…I-I guess y-you were ri-right about…about me leaving."

How could he joke about this? He was at death's door, and he was making a joke! For her? Was he trying to make her laugh? How could he even think it! "Emmet..." she begged as her tears fell, clouding and swarming with his blood. "Please, _please _hold on, I can't…I can't lose you!"

Clutching her hand tighter through the pain, he looked up at her through foggy, misted vision. Everything on him hurt, and if there was any part of him that didn't, it was only because he was numb. His ability to breathe nearly vanished– as if someone cut his throat off at the pass, choosing when and when not to let in meager amounts of air. "I…I love you…re-remember that, Lucy. You're…my…special." His tone was if he had given up on life, only speaking to make out his will before passing on.

Lucy shook her head, burying her face in the warm crook of his neck. "Please, don't say that, Emmet, I love you. I can't lose you, I love you too much!"

He reached his hand up, with immense, lip-biting pain, to her cheek. "Lucy, take care of Unikitty, ok? I love you."

Mature. He sounded so annoyingly mature, so dang detached! He could be indifferent to anything he wanted, she didn't care, but he couldn't just give up like this! "Emmet, hang on, please." Her bawling clung to her body and refused to release her heart.

"Lucy…" He reached up, slipped a weak hand behind her head, and brought her lips to meet his.

He tasted of blood. The metallic, tangy taste touched her lips as she kissed him harder, pressing him against the stretcher and gripping his hand. She _needed _him, she craved him like she craved life.

He broke the desperate kiss, wiping away her tears with a faint, light hand. "I love you."

"Emmet!" Unikitty sprinted to his side, already shedding tears as she collapsed next to him. "Emmet…Emmet, are you ok?"

Two paramedics rushed up to Lucy. "Ma'am, are you Emmet's wife?"

Lucy stood up as the men lifted Emmet up on the stretcher, never letting go of his hand. "I'm his girlfriend, and I'm coming on that ambulance." Oh, if they thought she was driving behind them, they had another thing coming.

The first nodded. "Sure, that's fine, but…" not knowing Unikitty's name, he shrugged. "…your friend will have to drive behind."

Unikitty nodded. "That's fine. Hey, Emmet." She moved close to him, mustering the best smile she could through her sobs. "Hang on, ok? Pretty please?"

Emmet started crying, whether it was from the pain or Unikitty's pitiful begging, he didn't know. "Don't worry about me, Unikitty."

The paramedics carried Emmet into the ambulance, Lucy still not breaking contact, before sounding the sirens and tearing through the streets to the hospital. "Emmet, hang on, please?" Lucy pleaded, as if repeating the request would make her words strong enough to fix his injuries.

Emmet laughed. Again, he laughed. When he got better, because it couldn't be an 'if' he got better, she planned to let him have it for scaring her like this. "Aw, L-Lucy…" A paramedic placed a mask over his face, his breath fogging up the clear plastic. "I…love you."

"I love you, too." Bending down, she gently kissed his forehead. "Hang on, ok?"

"Mhhm…" he nodded, the anesthesia kicking in as his eyelids obeyed gravity. "I love you, Lucy. A lot."

"Ems…" Her breath was sucked from her lips as her eyes jolted wide. Emmet's grip on her hand faltered, and he slipped into the land of unconsciousness.

Her vision clouding over, she followed swiftly after.


	2. Disassociating

**A/N: Sorry for the slow update, I sort of regret having 4 stories going. ENJOY! (And thanks SO much for the reviews!)**

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_July 13__th_

The clock's ticking broke her bones.

The doctor's steps trampled her.

The whir of speech slapped her.

Unikitty wanted to go home.

Her two best friends in the whole universe, both unconscious, lay in adjacent hospital rooms across her seat in the waiting room. Lucy had only been out for a few minutes, and was bound to wake up at any moment. She didn't know much of Emmet's condition, except that his surgery would take hours.

Surgery.

When Unikitty was upset, her grief either morphed to terrible anger, or shrunk to pitiful sadness.

Death, it seemed, grabbed her by the throat; her body convulsed involuntarily as she thought of her best friends, her lip quivered when she saw a doctor, and tears streamed down her face while her bursts of panic nearly stole her consciousness.

Grabbing onto the cold, metal bar of the chair, she sucked in a deep breath of distilled air. It cleared her blurred, off-set vision, but only drained her stressed, pressured mind further. She was trapped, walls closed around her, she couldn't move, where were her friends? Emmet? Lucy?

"Ma'am?" A nurse tugged Unikitty back to reality, which wasn't much more pleasant than her panic.

"Is it Emmet? Lucy?" Unikitty's terrible optimism won out as her thoughts turned to miracles.

The nurse, a tall, blonde woman, motioned with a cock of her head towards Lucy's room. "Lucy just woke up, you can see her now." It was the first good news Unikitty heard, and it just weakened her thunderstorm of anxiety.

The nurse led her into the small room, and Unikitty began shivering on the instant she passed the stark-white door. However, any concerns of temperature left as soon as she spotted her best friend, lying in a hospital bed, weak, but awake.

"Wyldstyle!" Unikitty blew a few celebratory fireworks into the air and dashed to the bedside. "How are you feeling?"

Lucy linked her arms above her head and stretched, a content yet tired smile on her face. "Pretty ok, what happened?"

The question nearly punched Unikitty in the gut, but her common sense blocked the hit. Surely, passing out would lead to some momentary lapses in memory. "You know, after we…got to the car crash, you and Emmet got into the ambulance, and when we got to the hospital they told me you fainted. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Unikitty's question was not without good reason. Lucy was staring at her best friend with a peculiar face of indifference, confusion, and bewilderment. "Uh, I don't know what you're talking about." She shifted in her bed, propping herself up against the pillows. "Who's Emmet?"

Shadows danced before Unikitty's eyes, mocking her, and the floor bounced up and down beneath her feet. "Wyl-Wyldstyle, if you're playing a joke on me, it's _really _not funny." Her breath had nerves of its own as her wheezes of air throbbed in her jaw.

Lucy shook her head, growing more concerned for Unikitty's state of mind. "I have seriously never heard of Emmet in my life, I don't know who you're talking about."

Unikitty would've been the next person to pass out, if it weren't for the nurse taking over.

"Ma'am, do you have any memory of Emmet? Emmet Brickowski?"

Lucy, to humor her companions, ran through the reels of her memory like a slideshow. Emmet, Emmet, what a strange name, she thought. Maybe she had known him in school, or with Vitruvius? Nope, she had no idea. "No, I haven't met anyone named Emmet."

A whimper came from Unikitty's side of the bed. It was from fear – fear for herself, her best friend, Emmet, and her whole future.

The nurse attempted to calm Unikitty down. Her cheeks were as white as the walls and her lips as unsteady as heart monitor on a convulsing patient. "Let me go get a doctor, just rest, Ma'am." She left her patient, who was both indifferent to the situation and concerned for her best friend.

"Unikitty, will you just tell me who Emmet is?" Lucy asked, trying to get something resembling information out of her stark-white friend.

Unikitty whimpered.

"Hello, what's going on in here?" A doctor walked in, and just by his stature alone, Unikitty felt somewhat calmer. His nametag read _Dr. Michael Kennedy_. His hair was nearly as white as Unikitty's face, but he had not lost his youthful character, for he looked like a man who regularly won bar fights.

From her bed, Lucy shrugged. "Unikitty says I should remember a guy named Emmet, but I don't know who that is." Lucy figured that, because of whatever recent car crash, Unikitty was a little dazed. After all, she would remember someone named Emmet, right? Everyone seemed pretty concerned about it.

Dr. Kennedy raised an eyebrow. "Ok, I'm going to ask you a few questions, is that alright?"

After a quick glance at Unikitty, who was now near hyperventilation, Lucy nodded. "Uh, yeah, sure, whatever." She sat up, preparing herself for whatever weird questions the doctor could have ready for her.

"What's your full name?"

"Lucy Amelia Emerald."

He seemed pleased, or, relieved, by this answer. "Alright, what's the name of this city?"

"Syspocalypstar."

A little, happy check mark dashed across his paper. "Uh-huh. Ok, name your three closest friends."

Lucy considered the question for a moment. "Unikitty, Sweet Mayhem, and…I guess Benny."

Another whimper from Unikitty.

Dr. Kennedy moved to Unikitty's side, gently patting her on the shoulder. "Don't worry," He advised in a hushed tone. "Your friend certainly hasn't lost all of her memory."

He turned back to Lucy. "Alright, what was the latest crisis in your life?"

Lucy shrugged. "Uh, well, minus whatever car crash you guys keep talking about, I'd say when we had to go to the Systar System."

"Ok." Dr. Kennedy had a conclusion, not that it was a pleasant one, but he had one. "Lucy, during the Kragle incident, who was The Special?"

While Lucy's immediate reaction had been a confident, if not somewhat cocky, smirk, her expression flat-lined like a pompous student who was just told they had the lowest grade in the class. "Uh, I…it was…hold on." She leaned back in bed, dashing through memory lane for the piece of her memory that seemed so vital, yet lay so far out of reach. After a solid, slow minute had gone by, she admitted, somewhat defeated, "I don't remember."

"Alright." Dr. Kennedy's indifferent reaction scared Unikitty. "Who are your ex-boyfriends?"

"Is this necessary?"

"Yes."

With a sigh, Lucy relented. "Fine. Uh, Batman, I dated a guy named Logan for a few months, and I went on one date with a guy I met through Unikitty, Mason."

"Who are you dating at present?"

"No one."

The noise that squeaked out of Unikitty's mouth was terribly pitiful, even Dr. Kennedy, who was trained to not let his cases get the better of his emotions, felt for her. "Alright, last question. Do you know any Emmet Brickowski?"

Lucy answered the question with complete confidence. "Nope, no idea."

Not giving poor Unikitty a chance to whimper or whine, Dr. Kennedy stood up. "Unikitty, perhaps we should discuss this outside. I am not a phycologist, and that is where I will be referring Lucy." He bowed courteously to Lucy, who finally started to look like a patient instead of a disinterested student.

"Wait, what's wrong with me?" She demanded. She shifted her eyes to Unikitty. "Who's Emmet?"

Unikitty reached over and hugged her best friend. "I-I don't...just don't worry, o-ok? I'll be ri-right back." She followed Dr. Kennedy out the door, shivering and growing blanker than an uninspired writer's notebook.

Dr. Kennedy didn't give Unikitty a chance to jump in, what with her stuttering and quivering. "Miss, I believe Lucy has Dissociative Amnesia." The words dropped to the room like a five-hundred-pound barbell, cracking and crushing the floor to bits of dust.

"Wha-what's th-tha-t?" Unikitty's ability to form words slipped away, lurking into shadows, and covering itself with a mask. This was not good. Anything involving amnesia was not good, no matter the word before it.

Dr. Kennedy tapped his clip-board to a slow, monotonous beat as he spoke with an officious air. "Dissociative Amnesia is like amnesia, but a bit...better. Let me ask you this; Were Lucy and Emmet close?"

The question nearly brought Unikitty's joy back. She smiled, and her clenched muscles let go, like walking from booming sunlight to calm shade. "Yeah, of course. They've been dating for years, they love each other." For her own sanity, Unikitty used present tense.

"Exactly." Dr. Kennedy pointed to her with the tip of his blue pen. "Now, the car crash was horrific, was it not?"

Shuddering, Unikitty nodded. "Yeah, I've never seen Lucy so broken up."

Again, he approved of her answer. "Well, for Lucy, seeing her boyfriend in such a state close to death was like experiencing it for herself. Her brain found the event to terrible to handle, so, for her own safety and state of mind, her brain buried the memories of Emmet all together."

Not good, not good. Unikitty gripped the wall as if it were her best friend. What was happening to Lucy? Why? How could it be fixed? Too many questions sprinted through Unikitty's mind, and she didn't have enough answers. "Is..." She swallowed the lump of sobs in her throat down. "...is she going to remember him?"

"It's hard to tell," he replied. "She could regain her memories by the evening, in a few months, or never. She could get all of them, or bits and pieces. We just don't know. A visit to Dr. Rhyan, the phycologist, will tell us more."

Her head lost three pounds as Unikitty let her eyes shut. "Dr. Kennedy, I wanna go home." Finally, after holding everything in and letting it transfer as anxiety, Unikitty allowed herself silently sob.

Dr. Kennedy pat her on the head. "Don't worry, Unikitty. There's a very good chance that Lucy will regain her memories. In the meantime, let's send her to Dr. Rhyan, alright?"

"What about Emmet?" Her other best friend, whose life was still hanging in the balance, was at least a _different_ crisis. It was like switching from math class to social studies; not exactly better, but at least it was a variety. She could ignore one crisis and focus on the other. "Is he coming out of surgery soon?"

Dr. Kennedy checked his chart again. "Emmet Brickowski was diagnosed with a broken leg, a severe one at that, and internal bleeding. However, I assisted the operation of the internal bleeding, and I do not believe anything is fatal."

_Thank goodness._

Unikitty said her silent thanks. "He's gonna be ok?" Silent, warm tears spilled from her hopeful eyes.

He nodded, his green eyes somewhat comforting. "Yes, I believe so. He'll need a wheel chair and crutches for some time, and the recovery will be slow, but nothing I saw was fatal."

Unikitty didn't respond.

"Miss?" Dr. Kennedy waved a hand in front of her face. "Unikitty? He's going to be fine."

"No," she countered, her cheeks fading from rose to ghost faster than Dr. Kennedy had ever seen in all his years of medicine. "He _won't_ be ok. Not when he finds out. How...how do I tell him about Lucy?"

"In time, Unikitty. In time. For now, let's take Miss Lucy over to Dr. Rhyan, shall we?"

#

Step, step, turn. Step, step, step, turn. Unikitty counted the steps and counted the turns, remembering and forgetting the numbers as she went. "Emmet, Emmet, wake up." Her breath mumbled and rolled out of her lips, barely fighting against the clicking carts nurses rolled through hallways and the screaming of children getting shots.

"Unikitty!" A much-needed distraction showed up, into the form of Sweet, Batman, and the rest of the gang. "We got here as fast as we could, how's Emmet?"

Unikitty turned to Sweet. "Emmet's still in surgery, he has a broken leg and internal bleeding. But...there's more." She didn't want to say it. The words, she knew, would taste bad on her lips, like antibiotics. If she said it, if she told them, it would be true. She could pretend it wasn't real if she didn't tell them.

"What is it, Unikitty? "Sweet took a step out of the group, whispering gently to Unikitty. "Is it Lucy?"

Nodding, she whimpered, "She lost her memory of Emmet."

Dr. Kennedy walked towards the stunned, silent, disbelieving crowd. "I'm terribly sorry about this. I'm Dr. Kennedy. I assume you are all Lucy and Emmet's friends?"

A high, unsteady voice piped up from the middle of the group, belonging to Benny. "What happened to Wyldstyle?"

The tap of his pen against his clipboard was driving Unikitty's nails into the floor. Dr. Kennedy's voice enunciated his words, as if he was telling a riveting story by a campfire, as he explained the condition of their friend. "Well, it appears that seeing Emmet in such a state, so close to death, was too painful for Lucy to handle. For her own sake, her mind buried Emmet's memory. Not destroyed, but buried."

"Doctor!" A short, brown-haired nurse bellowed from across the waiting room, as if she were six feet tall. "The patient just woke up."

Dr. Kennedy smiled. "Well, Unikitty," he addressed the whimpering princess before him as if she were a small child who was lost in the grocery store. While she wouldn't admit it, it made her feel a bit better. "Would you like to say hello to Emmet?"

She hardly had time to nod before crashing through the nurse and into Emmet's room. "EMMET!"

Emmet had never looked worse.

His face, clouded over with white fog, coughed and swallowed as through he had shards of rock stuck in his throat. He appeared thinner, sickly, even. Tears streamed down Unikitty's face, from relief, fear, anguish, every negative emotion in the book.

"Hey, Unikitty," he managed to squeak out. As he lifted his hand to wave, half a dozen wires and cords came up with it.

Unikitty sprinted to his side, nestling her head into his weak embrace. "Emmet, you're ok! You scared me! Don't ever do that again, I'm taking away your license!"

Chuckling, Emmet returned his friend's hug. "Aw, thanks, Unikitty." His voice was rapidly regaining vigor, and his color only struggled to catch up. "Hey, where's Lucy?" His fragile smile faltered. "She looked pretty upset before I passed out. Is she ok?"

Unikitty swallowed, now she was the one with cut glass in her throat. Her pathetic laugh sounded hollow and false in her own ears as she looked everywhere but his eyes. "Well, Emmet, about that..."


	3. Loved Beyond Reason

**A/N: Hey! Man, sorry about slow updating, I've been struggling slightly with this chapter, and State Testing for school is NOT fun. However, planning this story is! Hope you like!**

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_July 13th _

Unikitty's own blood chilled, and she shut her eyes; she shut out the world, Emmet, the room, the news, she shut everything out so it couldn't hurt her. "Emmet, Lucy…she…she doesn't…she doesn't remember you. She has, it's Dissociative Amnesia. She doe–"

"Huh?" Emmet's voice reminded Unikitty, in the moment, of what a child must sound like before going into surgery. "Lucy wouldn't forget me." He shook his head, almost smiling through trembling lips, as if he could dispute the fact. "She loves me, right? She wouldn't just forget I exist."

"It's not…it was the car crash." No, he would blame himself. She had to be honest with him. She had to tell him the absolute truth. "She remembers everything…except you, Emmet, we're going to fix this, like we always do!" Lies. She was lying and she knew it. How could she deceive him like that, how could she cruelly betray him by feeding him falsehoods, untrue hopes, and unrealistic optimism?

Her medicine would be his death.

Emmet said nothing.

How? Why? A day ago, five minutes ago, everything had been fine. Not a thing, not an emotion or fact, lived out of place. The world had lived at peace, the world had fallen in love, the world had danced around to piano music in the softness of night.

His girlfriend, the only one he had ever loved, had forgotten him. He could hope, of course. A brave, strong, optimistic boyfriend would sympathize with Lucy's situation, and feel hopeful. But he didn't have hope. He would not pound with cracked and bleeding hands on Mount Everest in hopes it would move.

Yet, he could not hate her. Oh, how he should have hated her. He should have hated her guts, hollered at Unikitty, screamed at her, cried at the doctors, and bawled for the day before. If he could stop loving her, stop caring, feeling, adoring her, would he?

"Emmet?" Unikitty could hear the grey, ashen loss of color in his face. His lips quivered, she could see him through clenched eyes how hard he trembled. She could feel his raspy, ghostly breath, and she smelled tears, the scent of smoke, like from the streets of the crash.

Out of the corner of his bloodshot, flame-infested eyes, he caught sight of Lucy's bag. How or why it was there, he knew not. Inside the pocket – the front pocket, where she usually kept small things – he saw two tickets. Two movie tickets, to a romantic comedy, _Loved Beyond Reason. _They were supposed to see it tonight.

"No." A silver shroud of mourning stole the color from his face; his ghostly, dead expression reached into Unikitty's throat and tugged on her heart.

"Huh?" Her voice, a clink of a fork against a wine glass, contrasted his cavernous, bellowing tone.

"I said _no, _Unikitty." His words pricked her skin. "You're lying. Lucy…Lucy loves me, she wouldn't just forget me. She wouldn't!" Bleached, frozen, detached death dissolved into hazardous anger. "Get out."

The metal bars of his bedframe cracked beneath his fists.

"Emmet, she's sick!" Unikitty tried to urge reason on the unreasonable, sense on the senseless, and hope of the hopeless. "We have to help her!" Where was her best friend? The one who would hug her, hold her, and comfort her in the dead of night when she cried over the silliest, most trivial issues and dilemmas?

"Get out." His voice choked her throat.

"Emmet, I'm only trying to–"

"I SAID GET OUT!"

Like a firecracker, he shattered her from his bedside. "JUST GO AWAY, LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Unikitty quivered, her weak legs trembled and sputtered with very step she took. "Emmet, you don't mea–"

"GO!"

His last comment was all her broken spirit could take, and she dashed out of the room like a gun shot at her.

Only then, as she slid down the outside of the door, did she realize how much he had resembled Rex; broken, alone, and afraid.

Warm tears spilled from her eyes, but she did not tremble, she did not quake, she didn't even breathe. She was hated. Her life, her friends, her family, crumbled around her and berated her for doing nothing wrong.

When her lungs finally broke through for air and her eyes for light, she spotted, on her leg, a small sticker. She peeled it off, and the message stabbed what remained of her heart. In bright, bold, vivid letters, she read, _Best Friends Forever! _It was from the previous day, when she, Emmet, and Lucy had been making scrapbooks.

She tore the sticker into shards and stomped it into the ground until her foot ached.

Like an angel, Dr. Kennedy's calm voice lifted Unikitty's spirits out of the hurricane. "Unikitty? Ah," There was a tint of realization in his soothing voice. "I supposed you told Emmet about Lucy. Well, and I wish I didn't have to tell you this, but it's official. I just spoke with Dr. Rhyan, Lucy has been diagnosed with Dissociative Amnesia."

Unikitty could not feel shock. There was no emotion, no fight, no life left in her, and she could not be hit any lower than she was.

"She is indifferent to her condition, that's how patients are with this disease. She will continue therapy, and in the meantime, just be supportive, and understand this is not her fault." Dr. Kennedy paused. "Unikitty?"

"I don't care anymore."

He sighed. "Would you like to see Lucy?"

"Fine."

Just as Dr. Kennedy stood up from Unikitty's side, Lucy's hesitant and somewhat careless voice rung out in their ears. "Uh, hey. I'm guessing I'm not very liked right about now."

Unikitty took a long, drawn-out, precious second before opening her eyes. Because, when she opened her eyes, it would be real. She would have to wake up, roll out of bed, and deal with her new, constant Monday-morning life, helpless to take a nap or even get a vacation. It would be over; her peace would be crushed.

"Unikitty? Are you alright?" Dr. Kennedy's voice sounded distant.

Unikitty opened her eyes, stood up, and wore the mask of bravery and deceit she had told herself she would never wear. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Nodding, Dr. Kennedy turned to Lucy. "Lucy, I'll let you talk to your friends and see Emmet. Remember, this isn't easy for him. Patience is key in this situation."

_Yeah, patience, sure. _Unikitty rolled her eyes and bit her lip. Sure, patience was what she needed, not a large hammer and a time machine.

"Ok," Lucy replied. Dr. Kennedy walked off, and Lucy wasted no time repairing things with the one friend she might still have. "Look, Unikitty, I'm sorry this happened. I just don't remember anything about Emmet."

It wasn't her fault, Unikitty reminded herself. "I know, Wyldstyle. We're still friends, right?" It seemed to be of great importance, Lucy noticed, that she acceptd Unikitty's continuation of friendship. After all, she had just had life ripped out from under her, and the least she could do was remind her that she still had her friend.

"Of course." Lucy smiled and gave Unikitty a small hug.

Unikitty sighed. Small bouts of goodness in her life kept her going. "Look, I think you should meet...say hi to Emmet. I told him everything, but you two should still talk."

As much as the idea repulsed her, Lucy accepted the proposition. "Sure, ok."

"Great. Let me talk to him first." Oh, yes, because seeing the very best friend who had just hollered at her was just what Unikitty wanted to do. She needed chocolate; lots and lots of chocolate.

Lucy nodded, and with another life-saving pause, Unikitty gently pressed the door open. "Em-Emmet?" Did he hate her? Did he blame her? Did he still love her, even on some small level? The fact that she didn't know the answers broke the last bit of Unikitty's spirit.

Emmet looked awful.

"Oh, he-hey, Unikitty." He swallowed through tears. "You don't hate me?" He sniffed and looked down towards his lap, like a boy picked last and left on the sidelines.

A soft smile on her lips, Unikitty shook her head. Something in her heart settled. Hearing the pitch, just hearing the inflection of his voice no longer dead or dangerous reminded her that not all was lost. She still had her best friends, and for that, she supposed, she should be grateful. "Of course not, I love you."

She wandered into the room, and only then did she see how life had tortured him in the last moments. His eyes, bloodshot like they had seen a murder, looked through her, not at her. He wore no color in his face beyond ghostly silver. He appeared to have just thrown up, for his voice muffled in his throat and he didn't seem to have the strength to lift his hand.

"Thanks," he chuckled, sorrow lifting his voice. "I'm sorry, Unikitty. I don't know what happened to me."

If there was one thing about Emmet that Unikitty loved, it was his kindness. Pure, unbroken, and untainted kindness, like a child. "Don't worry about it. I can't even imagine how you must be feeling."

"Dead." The blunt response swam through Unikitty's numb veins like blood.

She shook her head to clear away the splotches of tired, anxious color out of her vision. "Emmet, look, she's outside." Unikitty moved to his bedside, nudging her own tear-stained face into his arm as some sort of comfort. "Do you want to see her?"

Did he want to see her? Did he want his heart, already ripped out and thrown against cement, plucked apart, thread by thread? "Ok."

"Don't worry, Emmet. It will all work out. Maybe we can get her memory back!" There was a hope. Somewhere in the vast cosmos of sinister, murky sparseness, there was a star of light, and she would find it. She had to, if she was to go on.

Emmet chuckled, like one does when they entertain the idea that so clearly can never come true. "Yeah, maybe."

Unikitty gave him one last cuddle, then called out towards the door, "Lucy, you can come in."

Emmet refused preparation. If she knocked him out by pure presence alone, then so be it.

Hesitantly, almost fearfully, Lucy pushed the door open, and she eyed the man before her. He looked as if he was on the brink of death. She tried to move past the gaunt, weak illness before her and see the man she had supposedly fallen in love with. She imagined that, if he were well, he would be somewhat cute. While she did not regard him as her 'type', she could see his appeal, especially when he gave her a weak, half-hearted smile.

If he had nothing else to show for it, he had one heck of a smile.

"Uh, hi." Lucy's words sprinted through the air like a cocky, ambitious knight. Her eyes meandered over Emmet's battered and bruised form, but his corporeal scars hung in the background compared to his emotional condition; the bloodshot flame that engulfed his eyes, the lace of bleached, sickly silver that hung over his face like mask of mourning, and the fatal way his chest refused to rise and fall in a steady pattern. It was not her fault, she had done nothing wrong, she reminded herself, like one prays before a beaten animal with its back arched in the air and teeth snarled.

"I'll leave you two alone," Unikitty said quickly. She rushed out the room, the thought of crying again, in front of her friends, disgusted her.

Emmet stared back at the hollow ghost of what life had once gifted him. He stared at the past years, the memories, the dates, the fights, the hugs, the apologies, the gifts, the love. He stared his past life as it regarded him uncomfortably, like the stranger he was. "Hi. I guess…I guess Unikitty…she told you who I am." His voice quivered in his throat as if it existed as a separate entity.

The bitter, cruel air nipped at her arms as it rushed through the vents. "Yeah, she did. Emmet, I'm sorry." She tossed the apology in his direction like a student forced to ask forgiveness, bent by the will of the teacher.

The lump in his throat persisted, knocking, kicking, and beating on him. "I-It's not yo-your fault. I'm just glad that you're ok." The truth, the terrible, selfless, loving truth bit him and gnawed at his skin. Even as she stood there, officious and careless, he could not bring himself to harbor any ill-feeling toward her. He could not tell her how death felt, he could not tell her what it was like to mourn, he could not explain how it felt to have your heart quit beating for minutes at a time. He would not, could not, hurt her.

"Look, Emmet, I just want you to know, that we can be friends." He understood the hidden meaning behind her tone, and for the warning, he was grateful. "One, we're not dating. Two, you can't call me Lucy, and three, you're moving out."

That was all fine. He could live with it. When his mind, body, and spirit were numb, nothing meant anything to him. "That's fine." He cut his breath short in his throat.

"Ok, well, I'll see you." Lucy gave a small wave, and awkward intimacy slapped her in the back of the head.

He did not respond, and she walked out the door.

In his mind, in every respect, from every angle, to him, she was all but dead.


	4. The New and The Old

**A/N: UGH I need to learn to update quicker, super sorry! Here's the next one, and don't worry, I'll be using my cruel power as author to push our favorite Lego couple closer together soon, tee hee. ENJOY! **

* * *

_July 27th _

"Well, that's everything." Unikitty let her weak legs buckle beneath her, and she fell to the parched, victimized grass. The lawn had certainly taken a beating that day: first, the searing sun had dried and whipped down on it, then, Unikitty, Batman, and Sweet had moved all of Emmet's things onto the lawn, all before loading it into a truck for his apartment.

Emmet chuckled. He eyed the massive, mint truck before him, covered in mud splotches and dents, marveling that everything he owned was inside that truck. "I never realized how much stuff I had until I had to move it all out!"

"What do you mean 'you' moved it out?" Unikitty snorted, nudging her best friend playfully. "We did all the work!"

"Hey, I tried to help, but I have these things. They're actually kind of fun." Emmet shifted on his crutches and offered Unikitty a small, hopeful smile that only he could harbor. "I've always wanted to try these." He began walking in tight circles around Unikitty as she giggled.

She would miss him.

Her smile faltered, and he stepped in front of her. "You'll visit, right?" She needed his response. The last few weeks had been hard, the toughest that Unikitty had ever gone through. Disaster ripped out her whole support system, her two best friends, even her home out from under her, and she had to stand up on a wobbly cliff and wait for help.

"Of course, Unikitty." Emmet motioned to his leg, guarded by a dense, thick cast, covered with various signatures in vivid marker. "As long as this thing doesn't get in my way, I'll be here very day. Provided Luc…Wyldstyle isn't here."

The smile, a falsehood of his recovery, faltered and he forced Unikitty to look at his depressed, hopeless, one-day-at-a-time grimace. He and Lucy had not said one word to each other in the past few weeks, which practically starved Emmet for affection. "It'll be ok." Unikitty nuzzled her head into Emmet's side. "I promise." While the words burned her tongue and left a bad taste in her mouth, she tried to refocus, instead making sure he wasn't _too _broken up.

Emmet smiled. "I'll be ok. It's not like Lucy is gone forever, I mean, maybe we'll be friends again."

Going along with his brief spark of optimism, Unikitty nodded. "Yeah! And don't forget, she could always get her memory back."

"Well, that's everything." Batman shoved an immense, weighted box into the moving truck before cracking his back. "Emmet, you know, you can get books online now, right?"

Emmet chuckled. "Lucy and I always loved hard cov–" As if the situation had slapped Emmet across the face, his statement fell to silence. "Uh, well, I better get going, right?"

The hurricane covered Unikitty's mind again, and Emmet forced her hand into wondering if everything would ever be awesome again. Wasn't that his job? He was supposed to be optimistic all the time! He was the happy one.

She and Emmet had always been the strong ones. Not in the same respect as Lucy, but they were the ones who could not be beaten down. They could always find something happy, a bright side, some 'good thing' in every situation.

Now, as his head drooped and he wiped a tear away from his face, Unikitty wondered if Lucy was the only friend she had lost.

"Oh, don't worry, Emmet! I'll come and visit you all the time." She hugged him tightly, more for her own comfort than his, and he gently held her back.

"We'll come by tomorrow to see how you're doing, ok?" Sweet walked over to the group, a hopeful, encouraging smile on her face. "It's going to be fine."

Looking around, Emmet said his silent thanks that he had so many good, supportive friends around him, even if his special best friend avoided him like a hazardous animal. "I hope so." He stepped over the grass, onto the curb, and fingered the door of his car as a nervous fidget. He needed something for his hands to do. "Hey, uh, Unikitty?"

"Yeah?"

Emmet sighed and looked over her shoulder towards the house. "Say goodbye to Wyldstyle for me, alright?"

No, no, no. Not good. "Wait, you don't want to say good bye yourself?" A growing panic pierced Unikitty's voice, yet Emmet ignored it, hopped into his car and let his frown hang.

Shrugging, he leaned back in his car. "It wouldn't matter. I'll see her some other time." The monotone lack of effort in his voice sent a numb shiver down Unikitty's spine. "Bye, guys." She hardly heard his last words before the car sputtered, revved up, and carried him into the city, away from his home, Lucy, Unikitty, and everything he cared about, the truck bobbing along behind him.

Unikitty collapsed to the grass. "I'm going to sleep, wake me when life is nice again."

Batman and Sweet agreed, and both looked out the street once more. It was no use, the blinding, searing sunset had already taken him in.

"I'm worried about him." Sweet sat next to Unikitty, pulled her legs in and rested her head on her knees. "He's never looked so…depressed."

"Heck, I've never seen Emmet down for more than five minutes." Batman looked over to the house, possibly the only remnant of the relationship, a cruel, mocking reminder of what his two friends had lost. "Hey, where is Wyldstyle, anyway?"

"Hey, I'm back." Lucy, as If summoned, hopped off her new motorcycle. She had bought the sleek, garnet, smoking bike a few days prior, matching it with a ruby helmet Unikitty could hardly hold without her arms falling numb.

Unikitty winced as the engine thundered a few paces off. It threw up smoke, grass, and dirt into her face, and she only narrowly avoided choking on the smell. "Wonderful, I've missed you," Unikitty said, her words snappy and bitter. Lower, and somewhat rebelliously, she muttered, "And I see you've brought the mid-life crisis hotrod."

Unikitty heard Batman snort beneath his breath, and she smirked. Well, maybe _one _good thing happened today.

Lucy kicked herself off her motorcycle and yanked off her helmet. "What did you say?" Beneath her crimson headgear, where everyone expected sky blue and taffy locks, lay a head full of ebony ruins, contrasted by two streaks of neon. She whipped her hair around, almost showing it off, as she hung her helmet on the leather handle of her motorcycle. The whiplash broke her friends' necks.

"Lucy, wh-what happened to your hair?" Sweet, a newer one to the group, harbored the bravery to blatantly accuse Lucy of her actions. "What did you do?"

Her careless shrug, tossed in their direction through the sweltering air, called out on the Lucy of three weeks ago like a child that stole candy. "I changed my hair back, whet's wrong with that?"

Unikitty stood up with a huff, shot a hard glare at Lucy, and marched into the house, the only sound that of the door slamming in everyone's faces.

Lucy looked to the others. "Was it something I said?"

#

Emmet's masterful foot work, a feat to behold, managed to gently pry physics to prod the door open, push a singular box from the hallway wood to the apartment carpet, and avoid losing his balance like a precious gem. His weary eyes, blurred like water had spilled over his vision, climbed up to look around the room. Dust. He saw more dust than furniture. From the dresser knobs to the chair edges and from the TV screen to the kitchen counter lay a thick, caky layer of dust.

The room caved in around him as he tried to look for some sign of past life. A footprint, an old soap bottle, even a tissue would have put his mind at ease. To his left sat a large couch, covered in plastic and dust, centered behind a decade-old television. A single bedroom sat across from him and mocked his predicament. To his right, a kitchen stood, weary, as if it had lost too many battles.

He was alone.

The foreign concept of 'alone' frightened him. It marveled him how quickly one became accustomed to human interaction. He had spent a good portion of his life 'alone' and, for the first time, he had lived with someone for years in adulthood. Not to mention that 'someone' had been a higher level of clingy than most assumed. While most did not peg Lucy as the dependent one, and he was one of those people, she had grown attached to him and his presence. He sometimes longed to ask her, when she lived in a weak moment and clung to him, why she needed him near her at all times. Insecurity? Fear? Buried jealousy? He had never learned the answer.

His unharmed leg, nearly numb, finally gave in under the pressure, letting his body slide against the grainy, chipped, slate paint. He eyed the shabby box before him. It contained his essentials; a fleece blanket, one pillow, his phone, headphones, Planty, and a picture of him, Lucy, and Unikitty. It was practically all he needed for the night.

Actually, he amended that, as he spotted the TV remote, huddled and cold at the bottom of the cardboard box. TV. Yes, he need TV. Possibly desperately.

He found the TV as if no one had touched it in decades. He sucked a deep breath, the smell of age nearly choking him, and set to work. The dust-coated cords tickled his nose several times, a few sparks of electricity threatened his life, and he regarded his broken leg with some hostility as it clunked in his way during his fight with the wires.

Finally, only after an immense struggle, did the TV flick on to basic cable. Not his favorite, but TV was TV, and it was his best and closest friend in the moment. The canned laughter vibrated in his ears. The familiar sound contrasted everything around him that seemed new. The rain, unlike the city's usual sunshine, creeped into his skin, and he shuddered without consent.

The old apartment seemed something out of a childhood nightmare. Like a horror house, he knew there was nothing to fear. All the oddities, the fears, the curiosities, none of them could cause him harm, yet they crawled around him like spiders, just waiting to pounce on his feet when he least expected it.

A crack of thunder slammed against the building, and Emmet jumped, his hand tightening around the remote. He was alone, and the depression lifted, revealing pure fright. The rain battered against the window, punching and banging like it needed shelter from the horrors of the outside world as much as he did.

The couch, and the TV. Those two things were safe. Like a child wandering in the kitchen late at night, Emmet dashed to the box, grabbed his necessities, sprinted to the couch and collapsed under his blanket. The TV offered him _Where are my pants? _and he took it.

Several quivering breaths passed through and out his lungs. He bit on his lip to keep it from quaking. The tower shook with that thunder clap, didn't it? Could the building stand it? Could he?

He huddled deeper under his blankets, shuddering. The snap of lightning illuminated a tear sliding down his face, and the most miserable thought he had ever had shot through his mind like an arrow.

_Was this how Rex felt?_


	5. Operation: Cupid

**A/N: Ok, so, I realized that I REALLY owe you guys a happier chapter, like BIG TIME. So, let's see what our favorite Princess matchmaker has in store for Emmet and Lucy, shall we? THANKS!**

* * *

_August 4__th_

"Will someone just open the door already?"

"Why don't you do it?"

"No way in heck."

Not a peep or a sound uttered from Batman's mask, and he sunk back next to his wife, who shrugged her shoulders and announced with a determined grit in her tone, "Well, someone's gotta do it!"

"Sorry, I left my bravery at home today," Benny replied from beside Sweet. "Metalbeard?"

Taking up much of the musky, battered, torn hallway, Metalbeard shook his head in what little, delicate space Emmet's trashed building gave him. "Arg, I'll face a Megaladon any day of the week, but this?" The group subconsciously took a step away from him as he shook his head with vigor. "A depressed Emmet is sure to be a scary sight, indeed."

Scribble Cop piped up, "Well, who saw Emmet last?"

"Me." Sweet raised her hand. "Batman, Unikitty and I were helping him unpack a few days ago, I haven't heard anything from him since." The rest of Emmet's friends nodded in agreement at his lack of attendance. Phone calls, texts, visits, mail, all of it lay in vain, until Sweet had called an emergency group meeting (a habit she was prone to) in response to the week-long mark of Emmet's disappearance.

After a moment of contemplative, shy, unsure silence paid its dues, Watevra spoke up. "Ok, it's time to draw straws or something, Emmet's just sitting in there!"

Comments, arguments, rebuttals, murmurs, and whispers crashed around the room like bowling balls, except for one, one that lay dormant, staring up at the wood door. The apartment number, in thin, weak, plastic letters, read _B485, _right above Emmet's name, already shadowed under a layer of dust, as if he had abandoned the place long ago.

The door mocked her. It pointed at Unikitty, laughed at her, called her names, and told her she wasn't strong enough. That she couldn't save him. That all hope was lost, that her friend was as good as dead from this world, that she was in over her head, and that she was an idiot for trying to save him. It told her she was cruel for even trying. She was delaying the inevitable. Her terrible, disgusting optimism only dragged everyone's hopes up, and that was wrong. If she was going to fall from a mountain of faith, better it be her, instead of her family.

A vile taste rose in Unikitty's throat.

Doors.

She shuddered at memory of the door to the cramped, dirty, reeking box she had lived in as a kitten. She bit her lip when she remembered the door to the doctor, how it had hovered above her, threatening her with needles, frigid instruments, and foul medicine. She recollected, when she had grown a little older, how a metal, larger door, into Cloud Cuckoo Land, welcomed her, as she had looked up to Vitruvius, her saving-grace when she had lost everything. She smiled softly at the door to her Master Builder graduation ceremony, when life seemed to be climbing higher and higher into the fresh, wonderful clouds. She recalled the door on Metalbeard's ship, when Emmet had finally learned what it meant to be a leader, and developed the plan that would save them all.

She remembered helping Emmet build the door to their house, and how they had both agreed on a bright, cerulean door, the perfect accent color for the home. She tried to shove thoughts of the door to the outside word that had lay above The Bin of Stor-Age, how hope had once again crushed her soul. She replaced the thoughts with remembrance of the door to her, Emmet, and Lucy's _new _home, the one they lived and loved in. The door to her room, the one she had left _that_ morning. The door to the car after the phone call. The door to Emmet's hospital room.

This door.

"This is stupid," Sweet broke Unikitty's trance and the group's bickering. "Emmet's in there, and we have to help him! What kind of friends are we if we just stand here and let Emmet…" she gulped. "…brood in there, all alone?"

The refuge of the taller members of the crowd covered Unikitty's scowl like a shade. _Oh, yes, you've been here for a whole two years, I'm sure you know everything._

As Sweet gathered what courage remained in her battle-trained heart, the group moved behind her, an army behind the general. She gripped the knob, and it squeaked as it turned, sending everyone's ears into rebellion.

Unikitty remained hidden by the shadows of her friends, following their miniscule steps behind Sweet. "Emmet?" Sweet greeted, pulling back the door and stepping over the sharp bridge between the hallway and his apartment, where broken glass and nails lay for their victims. "Oh my gosh…"

"Oh, Emmet."

"Are you ok?"

"Have you gotten up at all?"

The murmurs, whispers, and mumbles of sympathy and shock scolded Unikitty, and her sense of responsibility listened to it. "Emmet?" Her dormant voice, finally alive, scratched after such a long rest.

The group stepped back as Unikitty pushed her way to the front, yet regret nipped at her heart when she saw her best friend.

He lay, on the couch, as if someone had left him there after torturing him to death. A light stubble traced his jaw, his hair stuck with sweat to the pillow, and Unikitty could only assume he had not changed his clothes since she had seen him. He stared, unresponsive, at the TV, where it quietly stimulated what emotion bothered to react. He shifted his gaze to the group as if they had just walked in, and while brief embarrassment lashed in his eyes, he seemed to forget it quickly, for he offered a simple, "Hey," as a way of response.

"Emmet…" Unikitty stared at him. There was no response, no comfort, no answer in her mind. She was supposed to have the answers. Everyone counted on her for happiness, for optimism, for a shoulder to cry on. Now, she had nothing, not even a word of shock.

Unikitty hardly flinched when a soft, muffled sob sounded from behind her, followed by Benny's comforting whispers. She correctly assumed it was Sweet, no longer a general, but a weakened friend.

A hard gulp ran down her throat. "Emmet, how are you feeling?"

Emmet shrugged beneath his blankets.

Unikitty shot a pleading glance behind her, but only fearful eyes looked back. "Do you want us to take you out for lunch or something?"

He shook his head.

"Do you want us to stay for a while? We can play some games, watch TV…" After questioning how long the poor device had worked tirelessly, she amended her suggestion, "…or we can just sit and talk. You know, like old times!"

After a brief pause, as if he was toying with the idea, he shook his head.

A ripple of hurt coursed through Unikitty's blood.

"Get out."

Batman spoke up, solemn, as if at a funeral. "What?"

"I want to talk to Emmet alone." She spun on her heels, looked at her friends, and offered them the words she would not say through her hardened, gloomy yet nearly-raged eyes, tinted with crimson and blood.

While the majority, the large majority, in fact, readied to follow Unikitty's curt order, a lone rebel stood out amidst the pack. "Unikitty," Sweet said, raising her hand, a student questioning the professor's methods. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

No one had ever seen Unikitty focus such a look on one person before. "Yes."

Benny, well-meaning and eager to keep Sweet off Unikitty's edge, gently grabbed her hand. "Let her talk to him, she might get through to him." His words breathed somewhat like a plea.

Sweet stared at Unikitty, and their eyes locked, iron-will against steel, both unwilling to relent, both wanting the best, and both owning different paths towards the goal.

"Let her do it," Benny murmured.

As if someone had reminded Sweet that fire was dangerous to the touch, she shut her eyes, let a slow, five-count breath flow through her lips, and turned to Benny. "You're right." She wielded a sweeter, softer gaze of friendship, forgiveness, and surrender to Unikitty. "Take care of him, ok?" Something broke her sentence off, and she glanced at Emmet. "He means a lot…to all of us."

Unikitty smiled softly at the newcomer. _Sweet, you may have some potential yet. _"Thanks, Sweet."

After the brief nod of respect, Sweet followed Benny out, and the group vanished behind the door.

"Emmet?" Unikitty bent down next to his couch, where her hopeful, soft eyes could meet his exhausted ones. "How are you feeling?"

He shrugged. "Ok."

His hand fell limp in her paw, and no matter how she tried to wake his sprits by looks alone, he remained obsessed and spellbound beyond the TV, beyond the room, beyond the world, lost in whatever grim thoughts overtook one in his state. Unikitty shuddered at whatever he must have thought about. "You miss her, don't you?" She forced back the regret for opening such fresh wound. The injury needed air, it needed to breath.

No response.

"You can come see her, you know. I'm sure you two could become good friends again." Lying to him no longer hurt; not when he lay motionless and uncaring before her. If all hope was lost, if the world stopped turning, if the sun set and never came up, if people stopped laughing, she wouldn't tell him. She would never tell him. They would find hope. They would turn the world. They would lift the sun up. They would laugh when no one else did.

For as long as she lived, Unikitty decided, finally watching her own tear fall onto the couch, she would never let him get hurt.

Before she could plead with him, a weak, tired hand lifted and wiped her tears away from her eyes. He said nothing, but the fact that he moved, that he showed any sign of motion and life, threw a spark into the wood of her hope.

"I'm going to fix this, alright?" The small, logical, high-pitched voice in her mind yelled at her for making such a foolish promise, one she could obviously never keep. "Everything will be fine."

He smiled lightly, as if humoring her. "Thanks."

She stood up before her emotions, already haywire and stressed beyond capacity, broke what was left of her spirit. "I'll call you later. Pick up this time, ok?"

A weak wave followed his nod, and she turned, walked the endless trek to the door, opened it, and left him behind.

#

_I'm going to fix this, alright?_

Unikitty's own words fluttered and flapped like a thousand trapped butterflies, panicking inside her head. Had she meant them? Was Emmet counting on them? Could she fix everything? Unfortunately, Unikitty was surer of the answer to the latter than any of the other raging questions.

The door slipped open, not frightening, or even comforting, just bothersome to her tired spirits. "I'm home," she called out, only one chord in her voice working to toss the greeting in Lucy's direction, wherever that was.

"I'm back here."

Correctly identifying Lucy's location at the porch swing, Unikitty ignored her exhausted heart that wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep off the rest of this century.

Her heart jolted, however, when she stepped onto the searing porch, where Lucy sat on the double-decker porch swing, sipping a coffee and smiling. "Who came up with this?" Her grin grew wider as she ran her hands over the seats, like she had found something she was missing. "It's a stupid idea, but…I kind of like it." Noticing her friend's forlorn expression, Lucy asked, "Where have you been?"

Unikitty froze, jaw unhinged and words stuck in her throat. She couldn't tell her she was with Emmet, could she? Things would be awkward. Lucy would feel uncomfortable, guilty, or worse, do something about it. What if she decided to move out? What if she wanted to get away from them? Emmet certainly wasn't holding her back, and Unikitty doubted if she was enough anymore.

"Ice cream," she blurted. Lying left a terrible sting in her head. She shifted on the porch, where the sun shined with less intensity. Was she sweating from anxiety, or from the heat?

Lucy nodded. "Ok. Oh, I forgot to tell you!" She shifted and put down her coffee, yet her smile didn't sit right with Unikitty from the beginning. Call it a sixth sense, a hunch, or just a wild guess, but Unikitty's breathing didn't stop because the smile on her friend's face was good news. "I met a guy."

_No. Please, not now. Not yet. I can't handle it. _

"A…a guy?" Hot dread dropped in Unikitty throat, just as sweltering as the sun.

Lucy beamed and raised a hand to protect her eyes from the sun glinting in her eyes. "Yeah, his name is Gunner, I met him down at the gym." Lucy's smile nearly, but not quite, resembled her smile when she used to talk about Emmet.

Nearly.

_I can stop this._

"Are you going to be home for dinner tonight?" Unikitty's words crashed out of her mouth like a car-wreck, and her once lazy, pitiful spirits jerked into high, chaotic gear.

Lucy stared at her friend. "Uh…yeah, why?"

"Thanks!" That was all Unikitty left her with before dashing off to the phone like the floor had lit on fire.

Lucy remained on the double-decker porch swing, and a small smile formed on her lips. For some reason, she liked the contraption. It was stupid and juvenile, obviously, not to mention a useless idea, but she liked it. It was humorous, kind of child-like and hopeful. While she had first looked on it with annoyance and trepidation, now, she welcomed it, like a friend.

She heard Unikitty start hollering inside, and she nearly got up, until the realization dawned on her that she was merely yelling into the phone.

Lucy smiled. Bless the poor soul on the opposite end of Unikitty's wrath.

#

_"EMMET BRICKOWSKI, PICK UP THIS PHONE RIGHT NOW! I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, GOODNESS KNOWS YOU HAVEN'T GOTTTEN UP IN DAYS, SO I DOUBT THAT YOU WOULD BE AT THE GROCERY STORE _NOW_, SO PICK UP THIS PHONE!"_

From his apartment, Emmet winced. Maybe letting Unikitty's call go to voicemail wasn't the best idea.

He paused, clutching the pillow, as Unikitty took a breath.

_"I'm going to hang up. When I call you back, either pick up this phone, or be prepared to get dragged out of that apartment by your cast."_

The sheer inflection, not the words, but the tone was what convinced Emmet to pick up the phone when it rang again. "Uh, hey."

"Emmet!" He could hear her smile through her words. "How are you feeling?"

"Ok," he replied. While his heart, battered, knocked out, nearly unconscious and limping, pleaded with him to keep his mouth shut, his head, just as emotional as his heart, paid it no mind. "Uh, how's Lucy?"

The fact that he was speaking at all probably shocked Unikitty, and he assumed that was why she took a minute to respond. "She's fine."

"Did she go to the doctor? I know she had a check-up today." Once again, Emmet's heart and mind, both weary, battled between vulnerability and safety.

"She moved it to next week, don't worry."

"Ok."

A lull entered their space, and Emmet nearly told her he had to go when she broke in. "Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?"

He groaned. "Unikitty…"

"Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with chocolate fudge, sprinkles, cherries, gummy bears and tiny marshmellows on top?"

Emmet paused. While the thought of getting up, facing the world, and doing anything other than watching another marathon of _Where are my Pants? _disgusted him, he hated seeing Unikitty cry. By her tone alone, he guessed that her eyes were as glassy as a pearl and wet as the streets just a few nights ago. The selfless nature in him raged against his growing stubbornness, and he looked at the phone in his hands.

"I miss you," Unikitty said. Her voice matched his assumption of her looks "Please?"

A sigh passed through Emmet's lips, as curtly as he could muster. "What time?"

From the station, a good few miles away, a policeman's head shot up at a sharp, piercing whistle. "Was that a siren?"

Scribble cop, enjoying a sandwich on his lunch break, shook his head. "No, that's just Unikitty. You're new here, you'll learn to recognize it.

Emmet finally broke into a smile. "You're welcome."

After his friend had gathered her breath, she replied, "You're the best, Emmet. And don't worry, I'll buy a pizza, that way neither of us will die from my terrible cooking."

Forcing a chuckle, Emmet replied, "Uh, yeah, heh." His lackluster tone broke his own spirits, and he winced at the image of Unikitty, dejected and crushed at his jaded tone. "I'll see you around six?"

He could hear her futile attempt to hide her drained sigh through the phone. "Ok. I'll see you later, Emmet, alright? I love you."

"I love you too."

"Bye."

"Bye."

The phone clicked off.

#

"Anyway, I'll see you at the gym next Monday, right?"

Unikitty muttered her silent, guttural thanks that Lucy could not see her scowl. Hardly a month had passed, and Lucy already had guys ringing up her phone. Unikitty had considered several options for ridding her of this problem, namely shutting the house's Wi-Fi so she couldn't call him, but she figured that was a measure best suited for when things got more out of control.

For now, she noted with a smile, bribing the manager to keep the gym closed on Monday would suffice.

"Bye, Gunner."

Off to the side, for her own amusement, Unikitty gagged at the smile on Lucy's face. From what she had heard, Gunner was, in Lucy's words, 'almost seven-feet tall, built like a brick wall, brooding, and has a great sense of humor' Unikitty translated that to mean, 'overconfident, a fitness-obsessed jerk, dark, and a bully' She ignored her own biases when coming to that conclusion, of course.

The phone clicked like a balloon popping. "Are you ok?" Finally, no longer enthralled with her phone, Lucy noticed her friend's bitter, anxious expression.

"Yeah, fine."

The doorbell rang, and it sparked in Unikitty the reaction little girls have when their friend finally gets to the house for a sleepover. "Uh, Lucy? Can you go check the pizza?" Her own ability to still put a sentence together surprised her.

Shrugging, Lucy nodded. "Sure." She dropped her phone on the table and walked to the kitchen just as the bell pealed again.

_Please tell me he shaved, please tell me he changed his clothes, please tell me he looks like a human being again._

When she opened the door, life seemed to finally smile on her, as night breathed cool, off-season air into the room, along with the scent of parched grass and summer leaves past Emmet, who smiled and offered a weak but painstaking wave. "Hey, Unikitty." While his voice lacked in enthusiasm and vigor, he was shaven, clean, wearing cologne, and in his uniform. Despite his cast, he nearly resembled the picture of perfect health.

"Emmet! You look…happy!" She gave him a quick hug and helped him in the door as he clunked around with his crutches. "Are the crutches still fun?"

He shook his head. "Not anymore, they start to hurt after a while."

"Unikitty? The pizza's almost ready, but I–"

Lucy walked into the room, tilted her gaze, and met Emmet.

Unikitty's elation exited her breath in a tiny, piercing squeak.

For the first time in weeks, Emmet heart began to beat.

In that moment, she looked exactly as she had when he had first met her.

Love. He had never experienced it, never understood it, and, in many ways, found no use for it. Oh, he believed such a thing existed. He believed that children fell in love, characters in fairy tales, and foolish teenagers, but not instruction-following, level-headed adults. Sometimes, when he had cuddled against Lucy in the night, he pondered how he had spit on the idea of love more than she had. She had believed it did not exist; he had believed it was fake.

Then, like an epiphany, she had changed it all. Lucy had rocked his world with a mere look, completing his understanding of the world and ruining everything he had ever assumed, known, and trusted at the same time.

Where was he now? Without her, was he back to believing love wasn't real? Had it ever been real? If it could drain from his grasp in the course of a few minutes, did it even exist? Had he triumphed all along in believing love was all an allusion, a fallacy, a mirage to keep people breathing?

As Lucy's hair flipped and jostled with her quick, suspicious glance at Unikitty, Emmet wondered if she had ever loved him in the first place.

Unikitty, innocent and cunning as a fox, offered a slick grin up at her friends, one very skeptical, and one very guarded. "Oops, I guess I got my dates mixed up!" Her character nearly broke for a minute, and she stifled a squeal. "Silly me! We might as well sit down, right?"

Before the pair could protest Unikitty ecstatic, if not somewhat hopelessly romantic attitude, she had dashed over to the table. Three chairs lay in position, and as Lucy realized she should have known _something_ was going on with the seating arrangement, Unikitty stole the chair on the side of the rectangular table. Two adjacent chairs sat on the other side, inviting Emmet and Lucy in with a friendly yet slippery voice. _Come on, _they said. _It won't be awkward, not at all._

Each with their own reservations in Unikitty's direction, they sat down next to each other.

A light chirp sounded from the kitchen. "Oh! Pizza's ready!" Unikitty stood up, ignoring (Or relishing) the panic in her friends' eyes as they pleaded under labored breath not to leave them alone, not to cause any scenes, and not to give in to her overwhelming romantic side. "I'll get it, you two get acquainted!"

Unikitty dashed to the kitchen as if someone chased her with a gun.

The room lay in silence, and Emmet and Lucy sat, motionless, as if one breath, word, or movement could increase the tension the room had no trouble elevating on its own.

She had hoped to avoid this.

She didn't want to face him.

Why did Unikitty do this? Was it her mission to torture the both of them, to cause her guilt, to shove them on a jury like criminals? Lucy didn't want to hurt him. Emmet seemed like a decent enough guy, and while she owned no recollection of their relationship, she understood he was hurting. Who wouldn't?

It wasn't her fault. She had done nothing wrong. Of course she hadn't. Therefore, Unikitty's actions were juvenile, childish, and annoying. Her guilt, misplaced and incorrectly distributed, fought against her iron will to feel nothing, only interrupted by the man beside her.

"So, uh…how are you?"

The question raised several emotions in Lucy's mind. "Huh?"

It was not her planned response.

A terrible, devastating flush covered Emmet's cheeks, and for a traitorous moment, she found it…cute. "Sorry." He looked down at his plate, and she cold hardly translate his mumbles into words. "Dumb question."

There was something foreign about Emmet. He was straight out of a mystery novel, unfamiliar and odd. Had she really fallen for him? She could see his appeal, she supposed. He seemed sweet, he had a cute smile, and he looked like the type who couldn't hurt a fly. At the same time, he didn't seem like the sort she expected herself to be attracted to – no matter the circumstances.

She brought the small smile on her face under control quickly. "No, it's not. I'm good." As if taking a step in a fog that could either be a cliff or an empty expanse of land, she shifted her gaze onto him. "You?"

A gracious tint coated his eyes. "Oh…uh, I'm good, thanks."

As she inhaled to reply, her words froze in her mouth, overtaken by a scent she could not recognize – but knew all too well. Where had she experienced the aroma before? It first hit her like one smells a cocktail, enticing, inviting and dangerous, then settled into a soothing, warm gesture of affection. Her vision nearly clouded over and her heartbeat muffled in her ears.

"I like your hair."

"Huh?"

Again, he took her confidence and crumpled it to bits. "I like your hair," he repeated, swinging his legs around the chair to face her. He gestured to her locks, now oiled with obsidian, only offset by her thin, vivid highlights.

_Am I blushing? I don't blush. I'm not blushing._

"I've never seen you blush like that, Wyldstyle!"

The pair turned like children caught playing in the street to Unikitty, who slid a plate of steaming pizza onto the table. The smell of rich tomato sauce, melted cheese and thick, fluffed dough wafted into the trio's gasps, and for a moment, the room forgot of the awkwardness, graced by humanity's bond; well-cooked food.

"You made this, Unikitty?" Lucy looked across the table to her friend. A brief flash of concern passed through her mind for leaving Emmet's compliment hanging, but he still smiled, so she assumed all was fine.

Unikitty giggled and grabbed a thick slice. It drew up dozens of strings of cheese as she lifted its wobbly surface into the air, only collapsing it onto her paper-plate because of the searing heat. "Well, if you count Pizza Papa's making it, freezing it, and shipping it to me before I reheated it, then yes, I made it!"

Laughter cradled the conversation, to a point, until it grew weary. As the chuckles subsided, Unikitty shot a look at Emmet, as if to mutter, _Say something! _She eyed towards Lucy, who attempted to avoid their gazes.

Emmet shook his head as subtly and harshly as he could, almost shuddering out of fear. _I can't talk to her!_

The look in Unikitty's eyes could have killed anyone who was not used to her presence day-in and day-out. _Emmet Brickowski, I have been waiting seven long, and I do mean LONG years for you two to get married, then this mess happens. If you don't say something to the love of your life right now, I'm going to take–_

"I have a tattoo!"

The proclamation, blurted and sudden, woke Lucy out of her awkward, hidden state. "Huh?"

The threat vanished from Unikitty's yes, and she replaced the look with total warning. _Emmet, back out now. Please, this can only go terribly. _

"Ye-yeah…I got a tattoo. On my arm. The left one!" He stared straight at his plate, the only nonjudgmental item in the room, as he blanched like a child whose teacher had read his diary to the entire fourth-grade class. He swallowed hard. "It's from a show I watch."

As Unikitty's red-alert stares grew, Emmet pulled up his sleeve, revealing a garnet heart, half-overtaken with a charcoal growth and pierced with a sharp arrow. It was no bigger than an overgrown cherry, but provided some character, and Emmet had no regrets, much like a certain alternate-timeline friend of his.

Unikitty, finally more interested than mortified, asked, "Is that real?"

The look in Emmet's eyes told her that was not the best question to ask.

Lucy paused, reached up, and placed a hand on his upper arm, as if to see the artwork better, and Emmet's pulse soared to numbers no doctor would be alright with. His face lit on fire, he could feel the heat in his cheeks all the way to the bone. He had been starved for Lucy's touch, for _any _contact with her, and now, she was here, touching his arm…how hot did Unikitty keep the house?!

Unikitty's heart survived no better as it threw a chaotic fit against her ribcage. She bit down on her lip to keep from smiling as Emmet shot her a victorious look.

Removing her hand quickly and quietly, Lucy smiled at Emmet, though he could not discern the emotion behind it. "Wait, you watch that show?"

"Uh…" He shot a short glance at Unikitty for guidance. "…yeah, why?" He rubbed the back of his neck.

Lucy shook her head in trepidation. Self-conscious shyness dawned on her, yet she didn't understand why. Was she afraid of what Emmet would think? Was she overreacting? Was she crazy? "No, it's just, I like that show too."

Emmet, tentatively, like walking through a forest rumored to harbor packs of wolves, replied, "Did you see that last episode?"

"The one where Diana talked to Josh about Tracy in the graveyard?"

"Yeah!"

For the first time, for Unikitty and Emmet, Lucy smiled, as if she was happy. She smiled wide, her cheeks lifted, and a tint of watermelon blush highlighted her natural glow. She laughed, the kind of contagious laugh that the toughest souls can't resist. "I love that episode!"

The two jumped into a million-mile-a-minute conversation, exclaiming names like Ross, Julia, and Destiny, and situations that, to Unikitty, sounded dangerous, like gunfights, unrequited love, cliffs, and…poisonous breakfast?

"That was the best part!" Emmet laughed through his words, and Lucy giggled right with him. "Oh, remember when Ross and Amanda had to jump of the boat?"

"Yeah, but that was _nothing _compared to when Kylie pulled the machete out on Louis." Lucy scoffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and smirked. "Served him right."

Laughing, Emmet waved his hands in protest. "I still think she should have gotten Daren to back her up."

Unikitty smiled, watching in content silence as her best friends laughed and talked like old friends over their fictional escapades.

_You know, there may be hope for you two dorks yet._

#

"Are you sure you don't want to stay a while?" Unikitty asked. Her hope rang out in her voice, even as Emmet smiled his refusal at her. Her question as not merely a curtesy, it was a kind ploy. She saw too many good outcomes, mainly including trapping her two best friends in a room, to let him go that easily.

Emmet smiled politely, as was one of his best skills. "Thanks, Unikitty, but I have to get home, my taxi's waiting." He wobbled and wavered on his crutches to the door, leaned on the wall, and chuckled. "These things were a lot more fun when they didn't hurt."

"I know. You'll be ok though, right?"

As Emmet explained how his injury was progressing, Lucy hung back, waiting in quiet comfort to say goodbye, a strange shifting in her heart she didn't understand, or care much for.

She didn't love him. If she had 'loved' him before, that was gone now, and she doubted what they had was that serious. After all, he was the opposite of everything she wanted in a man.

Still, she noted, as he turned to face her, he had a nice smile.

She pretended not to notice when his eyes watered. She ignored how he looked at her like a child looked at a toy the mother had mistakenly given away. She shoved her gaze to the ground when memories flashed before his eyes where she had none.

There was some debt to pay. She owed him something, for everything he had gone through. "This was nice, Emmet." She walked over to the door and ignored Unikitty's deliberate, massive backwards step back.

He smiled at her like she had just agreed to go on a date with him. "Yeah, it was."

A flicker of something more passed between the two. Emmet opened his mouth, shut it, and looked down, only a second after Lucy had done the same, and when they both tried again, their eyes met, shutting down any chance at a smooth conversation.

"Well, uh, I should go." Emmet turned to Unikitty, rubbed his eyes against his sleeve, and ignored the sympathetic spark in his friend's eyes. "I'll see you soon, ok?"

Rushing forward, Unikitty gave him a quick hug that nearly knocked him off his crutches. "Of course! I'll visit tomorrow."

Emmet hugged gently back. "Bye, Unikitty."

He gave a small wave, turned, and walked out the door, letting it shut quietly behind him.

Lucy turned to Unikitty, who was close to bursting. Her lips twitched with threats of a smile as she warned, "Not one word, alright?" While her tone remained low and sober, Unikitty followed her to the kitchen with a skip in her step and a sparkle on her horn.

Unikitty smiled like the Cupid she was. "Just one? Please? Even if it's just one word?"

Outside, Emmet inhaled a breath of the sweet, humid, August air. It weighed down with the weight of savannah summer, yet, in his mind, it felt as cool as ice skating in Times Square at midnight.

He gently stepped to face the house, a soft smile on his lips and stolen hope in his heart. "I love you, Lucy."


	6. Pathetic AndOr Scared

**A/n: NEXT CHAPTER! Yay! Thank you SO SO much for the reviews! Oh, and Christine, thank you SO much! I can't reply, so this is the next best thing XD.**

* * *

_August 21__st_

Breakfast.

What had once lingered as Emmet's favorite meal, favorite time of day, and a sub-favorite part of his life, now only scratched and tore at his fresh, bleeding scab. Waking up alone, in his own bed, without Lucy curled around in his arms, felt akin to pacing in the abandoned, obsolete rooms of one's childhood home. Something is missing, yet everything is there.

Getting out of bed had turned quickly into a dreadful morning routine. He scampered out the moment his senses had alerted his eyes to wake up his body. Two mornings in a row he had nearly tripped over his bulky cast trying to rid himself of the vile rising in his throat, before it wormed into his mind, where it would fester, multiply, and plague his thoughts with ill, pessimistic attitudes he was not used to.

One morning, however, Emmet had no rush to get out of bed, though he did not understand the reason. No urgency to move and keep moving slammed him in the back of the head. He was free to linger until late-morning, usually one of his and Lucy's favorite time of the day, when they would snuggle, stay in bed for hours, sleep…

He had to stop thinking.

The cast and crutches, like every obstacle in his life, had gently, quietly submitted into the corner of his life, and he had surmounted the hindrance without much difficulty. Drawing with vivid permeant marker all over the white plaster didn't hurt, either.

A good deal of sprucing had helped his bleak apartment, with Unikitty's help. His kitchen had needed, and received, the most attention. Cleaning took most of the credit. A good wipe-down here, a heavy dusting session there, a _lot _of repainting resembled giving a squeamish, middle-school boy a new haircut and a fresh, pressed suit. A small amount of effort, and a wonderful payoff.

Emmet reached up onto the tip of his cast, a most likely forbidden action, and grabbed the necessary components for his usual, well-balanced breakfast. His Master-Building skills had given him some unexpected benfits, for instance, he could cook fifteen waffles and garnish them within five minutes in his sleep.

In fact, he remembered, he had done that once. Lucy had found him at three in the morning, hung over a plate of waffles with strawberries smashed in his hand.

The plate cracked in his hand.

Emmet paused, hot breath in his throat, eyeing the clean, precise divide in the plate, spilt straight through the middle. His hands trembled against the porcelain, and he had never controlled his emotions so far when he placed the dish gently against the counter, sucked in a breath, and quieted his quivering frame into stillness.

_Breath. Keep breathing._

The steady rush of hot, humid air from the teapot rushing in and out of his system drudged him from the black hole of his mind, and he learned to trust his lungs again as his shoulders dropped.

Another plate, one he promised not to break, slipped down from the counter into his hand, and he continued preparing breakfast, running through different plans and to-dos in his mind. He had to call Unikitty, vacuum the apartment, call and make sure Batman wasn't acting too egocentric, order a new set of plates…

Only when he sat down at his island to eat did he realize he had prepared three different dishes.

One for himself, extra-sugary and topped with everything in the fridge and cabinet.

A second for Unikitty, colored with natural dye and fruits of taffeta and violet, a concoction that had taken a year to perfect.

The third, decked with dark-chocolate shavings and orange zest, mocked him the loudest.

_Look at you. _

_Pathetic._

No. He shook his head. He wasn't pathetic. He was scared.

Lip quivering, Emmet gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles white and eyes clenched. "Huge difference…" There had to be a difference. He wasn't sad. He wasn't pathetic. He wasn't shameful. Scared. He was scared.

_You never deserved her._

"SHUT UP!"

He slammed his hands into the dishes.

They all crashed to the ground, the shatter resonating and echoing in his mind for several minutes after, as he stood, trembling and watching the broken plates and smashed food as if it, too, would stand up and start berating him.

**Beep…Beep…**

Emmet jerked at the phone vibrating behind him on the counter, and his heart didn't fall back into his chest until Unikitty's name and smiling face shone on his phone, reminding him that an outside world existed. He wasn't alone.

"Unikitty?" he asked, as if there was a question if it was her. "Thanks for calling, I really needed it."

"Emmet, we have a problem."

Whatever she had to say, he did not want to hear it. He harbored no desire, no want, no curiosity. Why should he hear it if it hurt him? If it hurt him, why should he listen to it? Often, in Emmet's life, the cold, hard facts had only hurt him. They had not helped him. When had truth done anything for him? The Special was not real. Lucy had not thought he was tough enough. He, in another timeline, had spent years alone and abandoned. Lucy had lost her memory. These were all true. He did not want another truth.

Assuming his pause was enough, or not caring if it was, Unikitty, through scratching breath itching her throat, panted, "Lucy left this morning, I slept too late and missed her, she's gone. A date. She went on a date. It was to the movies, down the street, Gunner, Gunner took her."

_You could stop it, you know._

He knew.

_If you were a little stronger, a little tougher, you could stop it._

He knew.

_If only you could exercise some of that untamed, raw, terrible audacity, the strength that makes you break plates, lash out at your friends, and destroy your own hope. If only you could take that and use it to win her back._

"Emmet, I'm going to stop them, I need you to–"

"I'll handle it," he ordered, his voice blunt, solid, rough, and unwavering. A sword. A piece of iron. A tree trunk. He could not be broken. "Thanks, Unikitty." Without a word, he hung up, and Unikitty's smiling, optimistic face vanished from his phone. Her protest hardly reached him.

"Sweet?" Only half of her name made it through after she picked up. His stomach churned, and he wanted to lie down. A smirk tugged at his lips, and he wanted to show the world. His gaze darted from the smashed plates to the ticking clock, and he wanted the day to be over. His shoulders dropped in smug, snarky self-satisfaction, and he needed everyone to know.

Across the line, Sweet heard a tint, a lull, a snap in Emmet's voice, and whatever it was, she didn't like it. "Uh, yeah?"

"I need a favor."

#

"Are you _sure _this will work?"

"Positive."

Sweet wasn't so sure.

As her hands, curled around the wheel and sweating, shuddered for her friend's sake, she shot a look at him. He stared out the passenger seat like he owned a personal vendetta against it. Rain tapped like an unwelcome in-law at the glass, drizzling and gushing between pauses, and Emmet's eyes seemed to follow each and every one of them. She couldn't, and didn't really want to, imagine what he was going through. Was he hurting? Was he afraid? Was he numb? What would she feel if she was in his shoes?

She shuddered.

"This is it," Emmet said, cracking the silence in half. He pointed up the soaking road towards a dimly-lit cinema, with titles, ads, and posters splattered across the eggshell brick. The windows reflected blurred, neon, shadowy letters, the only source of light on the bright light on the weary mid-morning. It reminded Sweet of a 50's diner, or something out of a retro movie. Old, familiar, yet strangely unexperienced.

As she guided the car into the parking lot, she debated back and forth whether to mention the ghostly, silver veil that fell over Emmet's face, or leave well enough alone. "So, just so I don't mess up, what's the plan again?"

"You're my date," Emmet replied, bluntly. Sweet longed to say something as his hands trembled around the seatbelt, but he spoke over the moment, "We're here to keep an eye on this guy Lucy's going out with. I don't trust him. If we see them, you're my date."

A breath, an unsteady, quivering, injured and limping breath stumbled over Emmet's lips, and he clutched against the edges of the seats. "I'm sorry I'm dragging you into this." His eyes blurred and mirrored the trickling rain crawling across the front window, but for a moment, she had assumed they were tears. "I know Benny is going to hate me, but—"

"Why would Benny hate you?"

Immediately, Emmet froze, and an old emotion crossed over his face: embarrassment. "Oh, uh, nothing. Anyway, I'm sorry, I just don't have many girl-friends who can help me with this. I know–"

"Emmet?" Sweet rested a hand on his shoulder, and while he flinched at first, she saw appreciation rebelling in his eyes.

"Yeah?"

She smiled. "It's ok, I'm glad to help."

A warm grin overtook his face. "Thanks."

The rain steadily poured, gushing and sweating on their heads, as Sweet and Emmet stumbled into the dry, overly-air-conditioned theater. A musky scent wafted up into their faces as soon as they stepped in, but Emmet noticed none of it. He didn't notice the fuzzed, cheap carpet beneath his steps, the expired candy in the bug-infested, moldy shelves, or even the shoddy, rickety lighting.

He only glared that anyone would take Lucy here.

"Wow, hey, Emmet, I wouldn't worry too much about this guy, he certainly has no idea how to take a woman on a date," Sweet chuckled, eyeing the décor with a light heart.

However, Emmet had other goals. "Ok, I texted Unikitty, she said Gunner was taking her to an action movie."

The pair, after shuddering at stale popcorn, searched the endless rows and hallways of movies, flicks, and short-films. A romantic mystery here, a horror film there, and comedy pictures lined up everywhere. Not until Emmet came to the poster that frightened him the most did he realize he had found Lucy.

"Sweet?" he called to his companion, who rushed over to him from the other room, nearly tripping over a stray wire. "I think we found Lucy."

"How could you know this is…" Sweet droned off, and the title of the movie, _Brooding on Beveeria: A Sci-Fi Picture for the Ages, _spoke for itself. "…yeah, Lucy's in there, let's go." Sweet reached to Emmet's hand, grabbed it, and tugged, but resistance and hard, frigid rebellion stuck with him. "Emmet? Are you coming?"

He shook his head. "I don't wanna go in there."

What was he feeling? His hands trembled one moment, then after a quiet breath, they sat silently at his side, like a quiet child, until a hiccup in his ragged breath ran a pale, liquid flush down his face. Ever since she had known Emmet, he had been a good friend. Simply a wonderful, kind, optimistic friend, one she could turn to. He was one of those people that the world loved, and he loved the world back. A million people could pile their problems on him, he would know what to say and how to say it, and he could do it all without a sweat before breakfast. Stable. He was stable.

Now? What was she supposed to do? This was, if anyone's, Unikitty's department. She was foolish for accepting such a request, even if it meant proving that Unikitty was not the only friend Emmet could have.

"Hey, we'll get through it, right? We always do!" That was what Unikitty would say, right? Unikitty would rub his shoulder, smile, and tell him everything was alright. Even if it wouldn't be.

Emmet paused, the warmth of a woman's hand against his skin sent a vile slush slipping down his throat, but when he looked, Sweet's eyes held nothing but friendship, a gift he needed more than he understood. "Yeah," he replied. "Maybe."

_Maybe._

Grabbing his hand, Sweet smiled. 'Maybe' was alright with her.

If the pair had thought all the world's musk was bred and born in the cinema's main halls, then the tangible, malleable gloom of the theater, coated in powder and the scent of ancient coats, must have been where dust went to die. Sweet pinched her nose, wincing and shuddering. "Emmet, trust me, you have nothing to worry about, this guy is a terrible date."

How dare he.

Emmet wanted to punch. He wanted to kick. He wanted to teach the man a lesson. Lucy was special, she was _his _special, how could a man take her here? She deserved a beach, a sparking, glittering beach, filled with teal waves and pearly sand, where all her troubles could melt away. She deserved that and more.

Like the first flicker, the first spark on a shadowy Fourth of July, Lucy lit up the gloomy theater just a few rows before them.

"It's her," Emmet whispered, as if Lucy was a spy, or perhaps an evil mastermind, or a slick, fast-paced high schooler no one liked, but everyone loved. His heart, crumpled and crushed, lumped in his throat, and a taste similar to antibiotics and vile rose in his throat, and his stomach twisted against his spine, pleading and begging with him to lie down on the dirty floor.

Silence echoed around the room, only interrupted by guns hollering and bombs bursting across the screen as Emmet and Sweet found two cramped seats, two rows behind Lucy and Gunner.

"What does he look like?" Sweet asked, shielded by a wiry, lofty man in front of her. "I can't see him, is he ugly?" A smile broke out on her face, but it faltered not a moment later, as Emmet's lack of response shushed her like a scolding teacher.

A rough grunt passed over Emmet's pouting lips. "He's good-looking, I guess. He's her type."

_Not like I was ever her type. _

Self-pity felt good. Pity agreed with him, pity sympathized with him, pity loved and cherished him. Pity didn't betray him. Pity didn't scoff, tell him to grow up, or ask him to change. Pity didn't forget him.

Had he ever meant anything to her, if she could forget him so easily?

A bomb crashed in his stomach.

His vision tilted. Shadows and flames sang before his eyes, a chair a few inches before him flew miles ahead, while the screen pressed itself up against his eyes. His silver hands clutched the seat, and the awful, foul scent of the air meant nothing as he sucked in the largest breath his quivering lungs could. Was he going to pass out? Perhaps it was for the best.

"Emmet, look away."

"Huh?" his whisper, raspy and restrained by sheer, struggling will, barely hit Sweet's trembling air.

Her voice rumbled urgently against the air. "Look away, just do it!"

If only she had told him sooner.

If only she had shielded him herself.

If only he had never come.

If only he had never fallen in love.

If only, then maybe he wouldn't have seen Lucy kiss Gunner straight on the lips.

Salty, pathetic, stifled tears clouded his altered vision, yet he thanked them profusely, for they were the only thing he could feel. He could not hear the gunshots. He couldn't smell the musk. He couldn't feel the itchy leather. He couldn't taste the vile sweat on his tongue. He couldn't see Sweet pleading with him to snap out of it.

_Look at you. _

_Pathetic._

He knew.

As Sweet whispered gentle words to him, asked if he wanted to talk to Unikitty, promised him everything would be alright, and wrapped her arm tightly around his frozen frame, he never opened his eyes.

#

"It's going to be fine, I promise. He wasn't that good-looking, and I don't even think he's Lucy's type, he's totally boring. He's too goth for her taste, trust me. Batman at least had a personality."

Sweet tugged with a gentle, defeated touch at the wheel, and Emmet sat, silent and in another realm, next to her. He had not spoken since what Sweet had dubbed 'Deafcon Lucy,' and she suspected that she would not get another word out of him for weeks.

"Sweet?" Emmet said, murmuring into the soft, humid air inside the car, eyes distant and wandering among different galaxies in different dimensions. A secret hung on his lips, or perhaps a tragic defeat, or even just a question only a girl could answer.

"Yes?"

A soft, slow, smooth sigh passed over his lips, and as his hands twiddled on his lap, he whispered, "Do you think Lucy…does she remember…" Losing the ability to put together the sentence that thrashed around his thoughts, he shook his head. "…never mind."

"You want to talk about it?"

A pause followed, and he opened his mouth, but shut it. "No, I'm ok." Only after turning sharply around the corner did Sweet realize they had just passed Lucy's house, high and wet above their heads. It stood proud, like it had something to show, like it was an award Emmet and almost won, but failed at the last second to snatch.

"Do you want to stop and talk to Unikitty? She might make you feel better." What else did she have left? _Batman? _At this point, even the dark, somewhat eccentric superhero was a plausible option. "She's always got something nice to say, and if not, she'll shower some sparkles all over you."

_Laugh, please._

"Nah, it's ok. I just wanna go home." Emmet shrugged, leaning back in the seat like it was a bed, and this time, Sweet knew that the damp, wet beads in eyes were not raindrops.

The rest of the melancholy ride drifted in silence along the soaked, slippery road, and Sweet pulled along the stretched lanes, coursed around cars, until they floated into Emmet's apartment parking-lot, where a thin rain swam on the cover above the entrance, perhaps the only thing his building had invested money into. "Well, we're here," Sweet announced, watching Emmet's hands unbuckle and fall onto the car door. "You're ok?"

For a moment, she received no answer.

"Emmet?" Tears tapped and poked at the back of her eyes, but she promised to hold them back. She wouldn't cry in front of him. "Are you ok?"

The car door gave a soft click as he pulled back, rain and damp wind rushed past and into the opening, and Emmet stepped onto the damp pavement. "Yeah, I'm ok. See ya, Sweet." He gave a small, insignificant wave, and his uninjured foot touched down on the ground.

_No._

Emmet froze, midway out the door.

_It's not going down like this._

Before Sweet could realize she had no time to fight him, Emmet leapt back into the car, dragged his crutch inside, snapped the car door closed, and stole the wheel from her hands. "Move, Sweet," he ordered.

"What are you doing?" Whether it was her decision or not, Sweet crawled out of the front seat and into the back of the car.

Pedal-to-the-medal, Emmet slammed down on the brakes, sent Sweet crashing back into her seat, and his buckle clicked in shortly after. The car rocketed out of the parking lot and back onto the street, where he had one goal, one destination, and one ambition. The sloshing and spraying of rain hardly distracted him, merely reminded him not to go _too _fast as he pushed through traffic, somewhat mystically, towards Lucy's house.

"Where are you going?!" Sweet's back, forced like an April wind hit it, crashed against the leather seat as she grabbed the seatbelt with a death-grip.

"Just stay in the car." Emmet's words clicked against the air, quickly and urgently, he rounded the soaked corner, and drove the car in the muddy, malleable grass. The tires sank the moment they kissed goodbye to the pavement, and Sweet's breath hitched in a panicked, shuddering tap when it halted, at the top of the mountain, in the spineless grass.

"Emmet, what are you doing?" Was he nuts? Had he snapped? Losing Lucy would certainly do that. His hands quivered on the seatbelt as it rounded and flung across his shoulder, and he paid no mind to his cast as he maneuvered himself out of the car. "Shouldn't you think about…whatever you're about to do?"

_No._

Emmet snapped the door back in place without a response, the slick scent of rain scratching his breath, droplets crawling and dripping down his face. "If I think about it, I won't do it."

The rain hardly let up as he passed under the home's meek shade, but it provided some relief, some steady constant, as his hand rumbled against the door. In the time it took for someone to answer, he debated all the positives and negatives of Unikitty answering, and the pros and cons of Lucy responding. All-in-all, he preferred Unikitty.

A shift clicked in his ears, and the door pulled back, revealing Lucy, a soft, cross scowl on her face at the interruption, but his presence quickly replaced it with confusion as she looked him up and down. Only as her eyes fell over him did he realize how he must have appeared. Soaking, shivering, upset, miserable, terrified, or all of the above?

"Uh, hi?" It was a question, and a forced one at that. She opened her mouth to say more, but shut it. What could she have to say to the sopping, quivering, emotional mess that stood on her doorstep?

A rickety, wobbling breath in his chest, unrewarded kindness in his heart, and cautioned bravery on his tongue, Emmet asked, stumbling over his words much like he tripped over his own feet, "Are you free tonight?"

Only once had he seen Lucy's eyes so wide.

"Huh?" No emotion, no preference, no siding lay in her tone, and the slick invitation to continue beckoned him with a slimy finger, promising she wouldn't hate him, berate him, or laugh at him.

A hard, thick liquid ran down his throat as he swallowed. "Tonight. Are you free? As friends. You know, the movies or something. As friends, I mean. I was just wondering."

A lonely, pathetic man before her, Emmet lay his heart out on a silver platter, handed her a knife, and asked whether or not she would kill him. It was a simple, easy answer.

No. She could say no, slam the door in his face, and be done with him. That would be easy.

And, looking at his big, wet, dark-chocolate eyes, the hiccup in his shoulders, the way he bit his bottom lip, and the hopeful, apprehensive, daring turn of his lips, she knew it would also be one of the hardest things she had ever done. "Emmet, look, you and I…we aren't…"

"Just as friends," he repeated, as if the one element of his offer clung to his sanity. "Please?"

She was beautiful.

Even standing there, judging him, mocking him with her eyes, wishing he was gone, she was beautiful. Her hair framed and curled lightly around her freckles, one of his favorite parts of her. Her hoodie clung with a gentle touch around her figure, and she leaned, careless and unassuming, against the doorway, a kitten playing with her toy, Emmet, toying with the idea of wrecking him to pieces.

"Alright," she relented, biting back a sigh on her lips. "Just as friends, alright? Nothing more." If he could not accept the situation, she had to be cruel, she had to be the mean one. It was fine. She was used to it.

His smile, that dang, stupid, adorable smile that fluttered her heart and washed every thought out of her mind, beamed at her through the muck of the afternoon rain. "Thanks, Wyldstyle."

"Pick me up at eight, and don't tell Unikitty, you know how she gets." Lucy grinned softly, rolling her eyes and brushing a strand of her hair out of her face, biting her lip at the lovesick, melted look on his face. After all, why couldn't she enjoy his head-over-heels love for her?

His breath bounced like a balloon, first in his stomach, then in his throat, until hardly touching his lungs as he replied, "Ok, got it, thanks, I'll see you, yeah?"

Nodding, she tilted her body half into the door, offering a small wave. "Yeah, see ya."

"Bye."

The door clicked in his face, and from inside, Lucy gave up rather quickly on hiding the blush, the drum of her heart, and the soft grin on her lips.

Unikitty beamed. "See? I _knew _you would like him."

As Emmet hopped into the car, Sweet demanded answers, her voice perplexed and desperate for an explanation, if only to satisfy her starving curiosity. "What happened?"

"Everything is kind of awesome, Sweet." With a wistful look to the house, Emmet nodded again. "Everything is pretty awesome."

Maybe truth wasn't so terrible.


	7. Hope for the Hopeless

**A/N: YOOO! Thanks so much for the reviews! UGH, sorry for such a long break between this chapter, I had to take a mini-hiatus. But I'm back! THANKS!**

* * *

_August 21__st_

"Emmet, it's gonna be _fine, _hyperventilating and shrieking isn't going to do a thing."

Batman's well-meaning words did very little to help Emmet's panicked state, and he continued breathing into his precious paper bag, trying to get his lungs and his heart in sync. "I…. can't!"

"Ok, I'm here, how's he doing?" Unikitty's voice tilted upwards towards the glittering clouds as she waltzed into the room, smiling and depositing sparkles wherever she walked. Batman nearly rolled his eyes at her cheerfulness, but Emmet took the message.

"I…can't…do this!" Emmet threw the paper bag down, it fluttered across the room at Unikitty's feet, and she watched as Emmet's bloodshot eyes darted from corner to corner, his shoulders raised as if someone yanked on them, and his breath rattled against his throat. "Unikitty, the first date Lucy and I had was _after _she held my hand, after we both liked each other, it was after everything! How am I supposed to get her to like me when her life _isn't _hanging in the balance of a death-defying adventure? I'm not that cool!"

Beyond the raging, burning fire of anxiety and doubt, beyond the insecurity and fear, Unikitty thought she saw a glimpse of something more. A smile? That was impossible.

"Emmet," Unikitty began, gentle in tone and warm in voice. "You miss her, don't you?"

The looks she got drove right through her heart. Was she trying to hurt him? Was she trying to kill the last inch of hope he had, that tiny sliver of possibility that Lucy would like him someday? Maybe it was for the best. As his head hung, as he shoved daring tears back, he wondered, like gazing across at the most popular girl in school, if it was better if he lost hope.

"Of course I miss her."

Unikitty smiled. "Then you've got to go after her."

Even Batman, whom Unikitty had once thought would act as a hindrance to her whole mission, nodded and patted Emmet on the back. "C'mon, kid, cheer up. Wyldstyle's got a thing for ya, she just has to find it again."

"Yeah, where's our optimistic Emmet, the one who always knew he could do anything?" Unikitty nudged her best friend and pulled out her widest, most encouraging smile she had ever used. "You can do it, Emmet. I know you can."

Chuckling, Emmet rubbed Unikitty's head, hugging her close. "Thanks, Unikitty, but I don't know how much headway I can make on a 'just as friends' date."

A scoff sounded from below him, and Unikitty rolled her eyes as though someone had just told her a small spider lay out in the hallway, and she should be careful. "Please, Emmet. That's what they say about two people who are going to get married one day."

The dangerous, soft smile on Emmet's face briefly caused him doubt, that he was getting his hopes to high, much too high, in fact, but the well-meaning grins of his friends held him fast, and pulled him right onto the Mountain of Too-High Hopes. "That, Unikitty, is the nicest thing I've heard all day."

"Ok, how about _this?" _

Unikitty had always loved the sound of someone speaking through a smile. When they're just so happy about something, so ecstatic, so overwhelmed that they can't help but grin, and they have to tell someone soon, so they talk through the smile. Unikitty could always hear when someone talked with a smile on their face, and Batman did it, and that was the nicest thing Unikitty had heard all day.

Pulling Emmet and Unikitty to his side, Batman read from his phone, "Wyldstyle says, 'When's Emmet getting here again? Forgot the time.'"

The apartment fell into silence, until whoops, cheers, and hollers crashed through like a high school football team and through silence out the window.

"She's SO excited, Emmet!" Unikitty exploded confetti, glitter, and fireworks into the room, eyes dazzling like a Christmas ornament. "This mean's she's getting ready for the date, and she wants to go with you!"

Emmet smiled. Not a smile for Unikitty, not a smile because his life was comical at this point, and not a smile because it was early in the morning and he had just had a dream of him and Lucy getting married, but because he was happy. "Y'know what?" Emmet looked at his best friends. "I think I may have a shot after all."

"There ya go, kid!" Batman slapped Emmet on the back and Unikitty opened the door, smiling like an escort into the back-entrance of a circus. Mostly wonderful, but a tad unnerving.

After giving Emmet a quick hug, Unikitty said, smiling the whole way through for his sake, "Remember, some part of Lucy fell in love with you. Be yourself."

"Hey, when hasn't that worked for me? Bye guys!" Emmet waved a cheerful hand and walked out the door, crutches, hopeful disposition, cast and all, letting Unikitty shut the door behind him.

Form beside her, as she watched where Emmet had stood like a parent watching a child drop and spill his backpack on his way into kindergarten, Batman said, "He's gonna mess something up, isn't he?"

"BATMAN!"

"What?"

#

For once, Emmet walked up to Lucy's doorstep without butterflies snapping and slicing at his stomach. If a bad thought entered his mind, he simply imagined Unikitty's face either encouraging him, or yelling at him to be braver, and it vanished like a ghost.

Raising his hand, Emmet knocked on the door twice, smiling with the confidence of an entire team of cheerleaders. What was the worst thing that could happen? He and Lucy had gone on countless dates over the years, what was one 'friend date' compared to all that? This would be a piece of cake.

"Hey," Lucy greeted, opening the door and smiling. "Sorry I'm late, you would not believe how messy Unikitty keeps this place."

No reply.

From the frazzled, wacky mind of Emmet Brickowski, all he saw was Lucy. It was as if Rex had jumped into his thoughts, deposited every lonely emotion he had ever experienced, then put Lucy at her most beautiful in front of him. However, nothing on Lucy had changed. She wore her ebony hair with the two, classic highlights, the ones that had betrayed all his assumptions of what women's hair looked like. They framed her freckles, those freckles he had fought her over, begging and pleading with her that she didn't need concealer on the occasion she said she didn't like them.

"You ok?" Lucy tapped him on the shoulder, and he breathed in a little, like a goldfish in the doctor's office when a child taps the glass.

Thankfully, his guardian angel Unikitty had other ideas in mind, and he could practically hear her encouraging, hopeful words:

_"EMMET BRICKOWSKI, STOP ACTING LIKE A COWARD AND TAKE HER ON THIS DATE!"_

"Yeah, yeah, totally fine, perfect, actually!" The entire sentence left his mouth in half a breath. "Ready to go?"

While not staring at him like he was a maniac was perhaps the hardest thing Lucy had ever attempted, she nodded. "Uh, yeah. The movies, right?"

As Lucy shut the door and began walking by his side, which caused many problems on its own, Emmet replied, "Actually, I thought of something a little different, if it's ok."

_Be nice, Lucy. _

Lucy could practically hear Unikitty's stern lectures in her head. When had that started?

"Uh, yeah, sure, what did you have in mind?" Lucy ran a hand through her pony-tail, starting at the hairband and going all the way down. Emmet looked away. He wouldn't watch, for his own safety, his own dignity, and his own desire not to cry in front of her.

The pair left the grasslands for smooth pavement, and Emmet motioned up ahead to a quaint, dimly-lit theater. "Up ahead, you'll see."

Dazzling lights sparkled and weaved between them, running through their legs and dragging them forward into the transparent, glass doors resembling snowflakes. "Wait, hold on," Emmet mumbled, holding up a hand just as flushed as his face. He scrambled to the door before Lucy, held it open, and motioned inside while staring at the ground like it had killed a man. "You go first."

For a moment, Lucy did not move. She simply stared at Emmet, watching as he shuffled his feet like a schoolboy, his back pressed against the glass door, a stray strand of his hair falling over his forehead. Sweet. He was kind of sweet, wasn't he?

"Thanks," she replied. She shot a glance behind her as she walked in, and their eyes caught each other's as he joined her side. "So, uh, what movie are we seeing?"

Emmet broke the eye contact, thus halting the machine gun in his heart. "Actually, it's not a movie."

A temptation to find him, his plan, and his general atmosphere annoying tripped her heels and taped at her shoulder, but a stronger, faster, meaner feeling grew, one of enjoyment.

As Emmet guided her through the lobby of outdated, navy carpet, soaring ceilings and arched doors, past rooms of roaring, bellowing applause and dressing rooms with magnificent gowns, Lucy looked away from it all. She set a glare on her face.

_I'm going to not have fun tonight if it kills me._

"After you," Emmet whispered, only loud enough to break Lucy out of her thoughts.

Her ponytail whipped around as she turned to face him, finding he held a small, door-framed curtain back for her, leading into a medium-sized room. She walked forward, tugged by curiosity and wonder, held back by insecurity and hesitance weighing on her ankles. Light was unheard of in this room, apart from a few, glowing lanterns on a stage that spanned across the entire front of the theater. The rest of the room, choked with seats, sat in darkness.

"I know it's not exactly what you thought we would do, but it's _Hamlet, _Unikitty said you might like it…" Emmet trailed off, again with his eyes glued with Kragle to the floor. While his shoulders hung and his head drooped, on the inside, his heart rattled against his ribcage like someone had wrung a bell far too hard, and he breathed in and out five times in the space of a second. This was his one chance, and he was going to blow it by being different, just like he always had.

"Are you coming?" Lucy asked, already walking inside, a glint of wonder tinging her eyes as she gazed up to the top of the ceiling, like a child trying to find the top.

Emmet couldn't follow her in fast enough.

#

After the tenth and final standing ovation had died down, Emmet looked to Lucy, who stared at the empty stage, unwavering with a smile on her face. If he was stupid, he would think about how, a few months ago, he would have reached over and hugged her tightly. She would have smiled, told him he was an adorable sap, and kiss him warmly. He would have smiled, told her how much he loved her, and kiss her again. Thankfully, he was not that stupid, and did not think of these things, and the tears pushing at the backs of his eyes were for some other reason. What reason, he did not know, but it was certainly not from that.

"Y'know, I wasn't sure about a play at first, but that was actually pretty good." Lucy stood up and stretched her cramped legs and sore shoulders, though she imagined she would do it all over again to see that play one more time. Everything about it had sparked something in her she had not remembered, something from her childhood. Perhaps the love for the performing arts, or maybe the memory of her father taking her to a theater instead of golfing. Either way, she had experienced it with Emmet, and that was one of the (admittedly) best parts of the night.

"Really?" Disbelief rang out in his voice like glass shattering, and he followed her through the seats and up the aisle. "I was worried you'd hate it."

Lucy shook her head. They reached the top of the sloped theater, and she stood back, this time letting Emmet hold the curtain for her. "Thanks. No, I actually really liked it, I didn't even know guys liked this type of stuff."

While Emmet may not have recognized many compliments in the past, he detected the undercut of admiration in her voice, and for a moment, Unikitty practically took the controls from his brain and gave him a little push forward.

"Yeah, I love this type of stuff, but I usually don't have anyone to go with me." The words tasted foreign on his tongue, but in a way like riding a looped, six-feet-and-up roller-coaster feels. Exhilarating and terrifying.

"Well, maybe we can do it again sometime." The urge to stare down at the lobby carpeting, noting and committing to memory every curve of the intricate floor, had passed onto Lucy as she mumbled, "I mean, I doubt Gunner would stay awake for half of this thing."

Again, whether Unikitty had rigged a part of Emmet's mind to obey her every command, or he had just learned from the best, we'll never know. "Do you like Gunner?"

Finally, Lucy's eyes locked on Emmet's. He didn't look away, and without any breath in her throat, she kept her eyes on him. "Well, I mean…he's nice and all, just kind of an airhead, y'know? Like Batman without the celebrity status."

Emmet laughed.

As they pushed through the lobby into the brisk, almost-autumn air, where breeze rushed and danced around them in graceful twists, Emmet laughed, waving his hand. "I-I'm sorry, that was just funny."

Contagious laughter. Lucy had warned herself about such a dangerous concept, but in the moment, a giggle slipped into her voice, and she replied, "Thanks, I guess it was." Her vision froze, for a moment, and in the excitement, she tapped Emmet on the shoulder and motioned ahead of them. "Ok, don't look now, but that's Gunner."

"Don't you mean non-celebrity, almost-as-dense Batman?" Emmet chuckled through his words, and Lucy let out a laugh.

"Wait, he's with a girl, c'mon, I wanna see where this goes." Lucy's words ran through her heart and out into the cool air that reminded her of running through a sprinkler. She grabbed Emmet's wrist and dragged him along with her into the night, while he kept up rather well for someone in a cast.

They only ran for a few seconds, but in that brief time, Emmet had contact with her. She gripped onto his wrist like she used to when she had a nightmare, when she was about to hold his hand, or doing something like this.

Emmet tilted his gaze up towards Lucy as she released her grip on him, stuttering to a stop at an ice cream shop. Nothing about her had changed in the recent months. She looked the same, beyond her hair. She smiled the same way, she talked the same, and she still stole his breath with every turn.

"Look, I think they're talking." Lucy nudged Emmet, inciting his face to grow twice as red as blood, and pointed across the street. She pulled him once more, and sat next to him on a small, outdoor table outside the parlor.

Across the road, Gunner spoke to a girl about half as interested in whatever he had to say as the ant crawling by was. She yawned, seeming to call for anyone with more brains than he had to rescue her.

"Think she knows what a dunce she's dating?" Lucy giggled, elbowing Emmet again.

Emmet shook his head. "Nah, she's probably his sister and got stuck with him."

If Lucy had chuckled before, that had sounded like music to Emmet. Now, as she out-right laughed like a child, Emmet thought he had certainly died and gone to Heaven.

"No, no, I think he stole her from another dimension," Lucy replied in a moment when her lungs returned, and Emmet burst out in laughter once more, shaking his head in a nonexistent plea for her to stop.

"Wait, look, he's trying to hold her hand…"

Lucy grabbed Emmet's shoulder. "…she looks disgusted…"

Emmet put his hand over Lucy's wrist. "…it's gonna happen…"

"…wait for it…"

"…almost there…"

With a cry of joy, Lucy laughed as the girl hit Gunner with her purse, _hard, _before marching off.

"He made it to foul base!" Emmet exclaimed.

"Yes!"

Without noticing, without thinking, without ever wondering why, Emmet and Lucy's hands collided in the air and interlocked like they had waited to do so all their life.


	8. A New Chance

**A/N: YAY! I'm SO glad everyone liked the last chapter! XD, I was pretty glad to see them hold hands, and honestly, I was not planning for them to hold hands this soon. ANYWAY, back to what everyone really cares about, the chapter! THANKS SO MUCH!**

* * *

_August 21__st_

Their breath froze like the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. No one moved.

Even as he knew the consequences, the pain, the ruins of their relationship, Emmet nearly laughed at how hard it was to bite back a smile. She was holding his hand! Accident or not, he didn't care. Mistake or not, he couldn't care less. Whether it meant something to her or not, he didn't need to know. For one moment, for one instant, her hand interlocked with his, and he would remember that instant for the rest of his life if he had to.

Lucy lowered her hand, and gently, carefully, like stealing a precious diamond, removed her hand from Emmet's. "Uh, I don't…I…"

"It's ok, Wyldstyle," Emmet whispered, tucking the hand she had held into his pocket. He smiled through his words, "Don't worry about it."

Had the world just flipped on its skull? Wasn't this the part where Emmet started blushing, maybe crying, and they acted awkward with each other for three weeks until Unikitty made them forget the whole thing? Wasn't that how that was supposed to work? Lucy was tempted to ask him why he wasn't totally heartbroken, though when she opened her mouth, a different set of words came out, ones she though she had buried to the back of her mind.

"We should do this again."

"Huh?"

The pitch his voice touched the stars. She began to ramble, and as she did, she wondered if she had accidentally traded away for a new mind. "Yeah, this was…I mean, we could do another friend-thing like this. I don't know. Maybe ice cream? Do you like ice cream? Ugh, that sounds weird, I don't know, another play? I just–"

"You would want to do this again?" His mind had yet to reach where the conversation had led, if anyone could even call this a conversation.

Lucy nodded quickly.

Something, be it his heart, mind, or frazzled soul, settled inside him, like he was a boy who had confessed a wrongdoing after weeks of hiding it. "Thank you, Lucy."

She wasn't supposed to smile. "Your welcome. You…you ready to go?"

Though he struggled getting up with his crutches, he still offered her a hand, and she accepted it as she rose to meet his eyes, ones she wasn't supposed to get lost in. "Yeah, if we stay out too late, Unikitty…"

"…will probably start planning our wedding."

They both weren't supposed to laugh like that.

The entire neighborhood, perhaps even their entire section of the city, could hear their whole journey home. They heard Lucy's laughter when Emmet said Unikitty probably had a book of names for their future children. They saw Emmet blush when Lucy said he had a nice smile. They heard them both giggle as they got to the door, stealing glances they shouldn't have.

Lucy smiled at Emmet as they stopped at her porch. Even though she had told him, something still nagged at her about his smile. It was the nicest smile she had ever seen, and she had to quickly dispel the idea of getting a picture with him just so she could see it whenever she pleased. "I had a really nice time, Emmet."

"Really?" Despite everything, he still questioned her. "You're not just saying that?"

Her next words were a mistake, and somehow, she knew that before they even hit the air, "Nope. This was one of the best just-friend-dates I've ever had." A sense of responsibility, an evil, sabotaging sense of responsibility told her to keep that nasty phrase in her reply. Just friend. She was Emmet's friend. Given the circumstances, he should have been happy she considered him a friend, and she should have felt righteous for letting him become a friend.

So why didn't they feel that way?

"Well, I should go in, Unikitty's waiting for me," Lucy mumbled. A weight had dropped in her chest. It felt like a punishment.

"Oh, yeah, sure." Emmet nodded quickly, and he grimaced, his eyes locked down at his feet once more. "Goodnight, Wyldstyle."

Quickly, and before losing the delicate, time-sensitive nerve, Lucy reached forward, grabbed Emmet by the shoulders, and hugged him.

She released just as quickly. "Goodnight Emmet it was a really fun time bye!" The door shut in his face before she got her last words out.

Emmet's head was reeling.

Awkward. Friends. Fun. Laughter. Holding hands. Friends. _Just _friends. Hug.

What was next?

Lucy, from inside, collapsed against the door like she had gotten home from a war. It felt like she had.

"WYLDSTYLE!" A blur of pink sprinted to her side, but the blur's words were faster than its movements. "How was it? Did you guys have fun? Tell me Emmet took you to a movie and not a play. Did you have fun? Are you in love? Just kidding…but not really. How was it?"

A sigh passed over Lucy's lips, and she stood up. "It was alright." Her eyes hung low, and she gently shoved Unikitty out of the way, thoughts Unikitty couldn't read hanging over her expression. "I'm going to bed. Night."

With those words, Lucy disappeared up the steps, and Unikitty hardly heard the door click shut.

Mutters, enraged mutters about Emmet passed over her breath as she dialed his number. Honestly, she got everything set up, she put those two on a date, she pulled a thousand strings in a thousand different directions to push them in the right direction, and Emmet couldn't finish it off? She was going to give that guy a piece of her mind.

The selfie they had taken a few years back at an amusement park, no matter how cheerful and adorable, failed to quiet her scalding anger as he picked up. "EMMET!"

His sheepish, gentle voice peeped on the other end, "Uh, hi, Unikitty, how are things?"

If anyone had every mastered the art of whisper-yelling, Unikitty would have made them cry with her talent. "Emmet, I am going to kill you! What happened on that date–"

"Friend date."

"I. Don't. CARE. Why is Lucy all depressed and silent, or confused and angry, whatever, she's not happy!" Unikitty's words jumbled together ad tripped over themselves, slurring together and sticking to each other, though she knew Emmet heard every single one.

"She…she didn't?"

With a snap of his voice, Unikitty's flaming red tint melted.

Could a person hear tears over the phone?

"I…I thought she had fun. She seemed like she did. I mean, she was laughing. She smiled! She made jokes, we were falling into each other when we laughed. She loved the play…I thought she did." Emmet's voice dropped, and Unikitty's protests, backtracks, apologies and fixes all halted at the tip of her tongue. "Unikitty just…just tell Wyldstyle that I'm sorry she didn't have fun, and we don't have to do it again. Love you, Unikitty."

The phone clicked off.

Unikitty marched all the way to the kitchen. "Chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate."

#

_September 9__th_

"You haven't spoken in _how long?" _

Emmet elbowed the fridge shut and joined his friends at the poker table. It was Batman's philosophy that you're not a man until learning how to play poker, and since he no longer had Lucy to tell him she didn't like the idea of him playing poker, he had no excuse not to.

"About three weeks," Emmet replied. He offered Batman, Benny, and MetalBeard drinks, and went back to eyeing his maybe-adequate cards. Couldn't they have just played battleship, or maybe had a nerf gun war? He was good at those. He had even beat Lucy once–

Thinking was too hard.

A click came from Batman's corner of the table. "That's a terrible idea."

"Why?" Benny asked, as if challenging a wildly impossible scientific claim. "Why would it be a bad thing?"

Emmet watched, mildly interested, halfway amused, and mostly disinterested, as his friends debated his love life.

"Look, Wyldstyle isn't exactly into him right now, so he's gotta be in there all the time making it better!" Batman shot a look down at his cards. "Who's the dealer?"

"Argh, how many?" MetalBeard raised a metal hand.

"Two. Anyway," Batman muttered, taking a sip of his drink. "He's gotta take his chance while he still has it, otherwise it'll be too late."

Unfortunately for Batman, Benny had other ideas. "Yeah, but he shouldn't crowd her, that'll just make her run in the other direction!" Benny turned to Emmet, who could not have looked more bored with the conversation and company he was partaking in. Benny paid this no mind. "Play hard to get, that's what makes girls like you!"

MetalBeard snorted. "Like ye do with General Mayhem?"

It seemed the whole glittering city groaned as Benny launched into his babbling, memorized, routine speech.

"Sweet and I are just friends and we'll only ever be friends I feel nothing but platonic feelings for her and that's the end of it!"

"We can see that," Batman snorted. "Honestly, you'd think Emmet would be the most awkward guy in the world when it comes to girls, but nope, you somehow managed to top the master."

Emmet grinned. "Thank you!"

Hyperventilating to a degree, Benny stood up at the table. "I…I need to get some air!" He pushed past the chair and rushed out the room, but Emmet caught, just barely, that Benny's phone was exploding with a call from Sweet.

If he couldn't help his own pathetic love life, Emmet decided he could at least help a friend. "I'm going to go help him. Here, MetalBeard, you can bet with my cards." After shoving his set of cards into MetalBeard's elated face, Emmet ran out the door on Benny's tail.

By the time Emmet hit the open, autumn air, with all its leaves fluttering past the frosted, chilled wind running over his hands, Benny was already saying his goodbyes to Sweet, "O-ok, bye, Sweet. I'll see you in a few? Ok. Bye." Emmet recognized the smile on his face all too well.

"You look just like I did when I talked to Lucy." The use of her real name, no matter how rarely he was permitted to use it, tasted like chocolate after medicine. A palate cleanse.

"She'll hate me," Benny muttered. The wind was louder than his voice as he mumbled, kicking a rock into the street, "If I tell her I like her she's just going to think I'm a big dork."

A quick laugh fell over Emmet's voice. "What's wrong with that?"

"Sweet isn't a dork. She's cool."

"Benny, can I give you some advice?" Emmet hardly needed an answer. People who used The Unikitty Advice Method hardly needed permission to share their thoughts, that was one of the staples of helping people like Unikitty did.

Benny nodded, and the two sat on the frosted, burning-cold stone steps of the building. "Sweet is a total dork. A lot of girls are. Sweet and I have had eating competitions, built whole amusement parks out of dominos, and ridden the kiddie rides at the mall. Trust me, you don't have to worry about Sweet being cooler than you are."

"But she doesn't like me. She wants someone funnier, cooler, smarter."

"And you think I'm Lucy's type?" Emmet laughed. He wiped a tear, be it from too much emotion, too much cold, or too much laughter, from his eyes. "When I met Lucy, she was dating Batman! BATMAN! She was dating a superhero, and somehow, she liked me better. Benny, that was the day I learned that anything is possible."

"But what if she doesn't?" Benny threw his arms out to the side, eyes bloodshot and holding back fear Emmet had hardly seen, but knew he had felt. "What if I ruin everything?"

Emmet's voice grew harsh. Cold and unfeeling. His jaw set and his shoulders dropped. "Benny, I lost the love of my life. She doesn't remember who I am, the memories we shared, she doesn't remember how she would kiss me awake if I was tired, or how every Saturday morning we would play a kiddie board game I bought at the store. She doesn't remember how much I love her. She doesn't know that I would die for her. She doesn't remember _anything _about me. It's all gone, and I may never get it back."

The speech had stricken Benny silent. "I don't think I'd make it if I lost Sweet like that. She's my best friend."

"I thought I was done with love. With friendship." Emmet's hands fell to the steps, he blew a soft puff of air, and he watched it freeze in the air until it dispelled. "If it wasn't for you guys, I don't think I ever would have gotten off that couch."

"That bad?" Benny sounded like a child asking a camp counselor if ghosts were real, huddling with his friends in a tent.

"That bad. But…I have Unikitty. And she wasn't going to let us get away with it. Even without our permission, she got us in the same room. I knew I couldn't give up on her. Not yet."

A car, neon-pink and as shiny as a pearl, slowed to a stop at the side of the rode. The sleek-ebony window rolled down, and Sweet popped her smiling face out. "Hey Benny, you ready to go? Oh, hi, Emmet!"

"Hi Sweet!" Emmet waved, chipper in voice and smiling. He turned to Benny, whose face seemed to hold a battle of the ages between brave, New-Year's-resolution ambitiousness, and sheepish vulnerability. Emmet lowered his voice, "Benny, tell her. It won't always be this easy."

Before Emmet's ego could get a swift intake of air, an idea flashed across Benny's face, and Emmet wasn't a fan. He pulled Emmet side to the entrance of the building, waved for Sweet to give them a minute, and muttered to Emmet, "I'll tell Sweet how I feel if you start talking to Wyldstyle again."

No.

Emmet felt the hundred-pound weight drop into his stomach. Talk to Lucy? That was about as good of an idea as putting raisins in Unikitty's birthday breakfast. Running into the middle of a raged battle would give him better odds of survival than either Unikitty's wrath or Lucy's displeasure with him. "Nuh-uh, no way, I can't talk to her."

"Just like I couldn't talk to Sweet?" Benny crossed his arms over his chest. No way was Emmet getting away with this. "Didn't you say that it was because of your friends that you guys started talking again?"

No response beside Emmet's shuffling feet.

"Besides, I'm not going to tell Sweet I like her unless you have some form of contact with Wyldstyle."

Emmet paused. He didn't have any choice. If he believed he did, it was an illusion. A prank, really. Besides, if Unikitty ever heard that he passed up the chance to get her second-favorite couple together, his chances of survival would diminish to almost nothing.

"Fine, but I might go through Unikitty first, ok?" Though a rush of terror, regret, anxiety, and sickness rolled and bounced in Emmet's stomach, Benny smiled at the decision.

"Thanks." Benny patted him on the shoulder, then ran off towards the car, smiling with the giddy, young-and-in-love energy Emmet felt too old to have again. "Bye Emmet, have fun!"

As the car drove off, two people who had their whole life to love and live together inside it, Emmet had the worst idea he had ever had. It was terrible, really. It would ruin everything, and possibly snap his chances with Lucy in half. It was a stupid idea, one that any sane man would have told him to abandon it immediately.

But in Emmet's mind, it was the greatest idea ever conceived.


	9. My Name Is

**A/N: THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS! Ok, gotta make this a/n quick, cause, well… ENJOY! (EDIT: Fixed the dates, SORRY!)**

_ September 12__th_

_"My name is Rex Dangervest."_

"Now, Emmet has gone through a rough couple of months. And when people go through such things, sometimes they do crazy things, things that their friends may not understand or like. Our job, as his friends, is to help him get past this and fix it, right?"

These where the almost-but-not-quite comforting words Sweet tried to explain to Unikitty as she panted through a brown paper bag. "I'm sure there's a very good explanation for this, alright?" Sweet gently patted Unikitty on the shoulder, and as the wide-eyed, frozen princess twitched atop the kitchen counter, Sweet carefully removed the bag. "There, feel better?"

As her lungs recovered, her vision stepped back into her head that ceased spinning with the Earth, Unikitty clutched Sweet's wrist, jerked in Emmet's direction in the living room, and growled, "Bring…Emmet…here…"

"Yeah, see, about that…" Sweet gathered what remained of her quivering breath, heaped it up in a pile and used it on the one sentence that could save her life from Unikitty's wrath, "Emmet's plan may or may not be working."

As skepticism flashed across her friend's face, Sweet stepped back and let the princess wander to the very edge of the kitchen, where she spotted Emmet, in a full-blown Rex costume right down to the stubble, flirting shamelessly with a halfway interested Lucy. And considering that Lucy's normal level of interest in anything was far below average, this was nothing short of a miracle.

That's what he looked like.

The infamous Rex Dangervest, who had forced too many sleepless nights on Lucy and gave guilt no man should bear to Emmet, was in her living room. Unikitty hadn't expected him to look like that. Though she didn't know what she _had _expected, it certainly wasn't…that.

"I'm going to kill him," Unikitty muttered.

"Ok, before we start planning our best friend's murder…" Sweet gently took Unikitty by the shoulders, dragged her back into the kitchen, and looked her in the eyes for the few moments she could hold her attention. "Emmet is probably scared. Terrified, even, of losing Lucy, and this is his way of fixing it. Maybe…maybe this is a good thing."

Unikitty's eyes darkened over.

Sweet gulped.

"This is _not _good, in any respect." Unikitty raised her voice, but Sweet shushed her, and she dropped into a whisper-yell Batman would cower in fear at. "He's lying to her right now, and in my book, that's not a start for a good relationship. I need her to fall in love with Emmet, not Rex!"

"I know, I know, but…maybe this can work too!" Sweet forced as much of a preschool teacher's voice as she could, but Unikitty continued her rebellious, teenager stare. "If Lucy falls in love with Rex–"

Eyes blazing like a firework, Unikitty screeched, "THEN WHAT?! Then Emmet either has to live a lie for the rest of his life, or he tells her the truth and she hates him forever!"

"Maybe not…"

"Maybe you can go get Emmet in here so I can straighten this mess out," Unikitty ordered, low enough to bang the Earth's core. Sweet opened her mouth to protest, but Unikitty jerked her head towards the living room. "Get. Him. Now."

Without a word, but only a look, Sweet went, grumbling, to grab Unikitty's next victim.

"Well, I don't really know where I'm from, my earliest memory is rocketing off in a ship into the galaxy," Emmet said. His voice lay in a constant drop, low and muttering, as he leaned back on the couch with his feet on the table. He ran a hand through his hair, smirked at Lucy, and turned around to face Sweet the moment she entered the room. "Unikitty want me?"

The tense hold Sweet's muscles had on her bones prevented her from answering for a moment. "Uh… yeah, she's in the kitchen, something about…the thing you guys are doing tomorrow."

Emmet stood up, flipped his ruffled hair, and tipped Sweet's chin up as he walked by. "You're a terrible liar, kid."

"Do you actually like him?" Sweet asked the second Emmet had gone. She shuddered and watched the space he had walked through, as though it had been infected, and muttered to Lucy, "He seems like a jerk to me."

The lovesick, dreamy, far-off stare in Lucy's eyes did not sit well with Sweet. "Well, he's certainly nice to look at, gotta give him that."

"Oh _brother."_

"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"

"Unikitty!"

Finally, the use of his real, much higher-pitched voice convinced the princess-cat-unicorn to cool her temper, at least enough to hop off his back. Emmet stared at her, wide-eyed and quivering. Unikitty stared right back.

"You're probably pretty mad right now…" Emmet began, in his own octave, putting his hands up before Unikitty, a lion trainer before the beast. "…but first, let me at least explain."

Unikitty couldn't hear a word he said.

Though words were said, though his mouth moved, though he spoke and explained his side of things, she would remember none of it. She was talking to Rex. Everything on him was perfectly Rex-like, from what Unikitty had seen and heard. It wasn't possible to hear Emmet when he spoke through this mask.

"Why?" Her voice came out much more sheepish than she had planned.

Where she expected Emmet to make an excuse, lie, or run away, he stood straight, looked her in the eye, and blatantly admitted, "Because Lucy hates Emmet."

"No, of course she doesn't!" She couldn't lose Emmet's hope too. As good as she was, Unikitty could not bring Emmet and Lucy back together if both didn't want it, not in this conflict, not this way, and not when her head refused to weigh more than a paper clip. "Deep down, Lucy really loves–"

"Nice try," Emmet chuckled with no mirth. He didn't look like Rex anymore. Not when tears pooled in his eyes. "She…she doesn't love me anymore. I can't keep ignoring it. I'm not that stupid. Maybe…" Tears spilled out, and he rubbed his eyes against his sleeves, muttering muffled words into his arm, "…M-maybe she'll love Rex."

No, no, no. "Emmet, you've gotta keep trying!" Unikitty gripped onto his arm. He paused. "Lucy fell in love with you once–"

The glint in his eye, the one that hollered when he got injured and screamed her out of the room, came back, and it came with a vengeance. Emmet glared. "Within a _day, _Unikitty. She fell in love with me faster than I made strangers remember my name. It's been months."

"Maybe if you–"

"NO!"

Emmet thrashed back from his best friend. "It's done! I became Rex once, I can do it again, especially if it means I get Lucy back." His eyes screamed at her. His grimace stared her down. Unikitty was in a faceoff with Rex. Emmet had run away.

"You're lying to her!"

"Well, I don't care!"

Unikitty didn't shrink back. She focused her gaze on him, no longer choked with rage, not even anger, but flooded with trickling, weary disappointment. "Then, in that case, you really are Rex."

Without another word or look, Unikitty marched out the kitchen and up to her room, slamming the door hard enough to bring a platoon of soldiers to their knees. Emmet hardly flinched.

"Everything ok in here?" Lucy dropped a quick knock on the wall as she walked in. Her hair flipped to the side, and she leaned against the counter as Emmet turned to face her. Both lost their breaths. "I was just checking, y'know?"

_It's Rex. She likes Rex. Be Rex._

It made sense. Emmet's philosophy was that if you could explain to a small child in a way that made sense, it was probably a good idea. He had abandoned this thinking a long time ago, but now it seemed to serve him quite well.

"Yeah, we're good." Emmet dropped his voice and pulled a smirk out from a part of his brain that he hardly knew had existed. When he had first convinced of the plan, he had doubted that he could even do a reasonable impression of his counterpart.

Emmet had rarely been so wrong.

"So, uh, you'd wanna go to the movies some time or something? I don't know what I'm saying, you've probably got a boyfriend, I mean, you at ya." Emmet winked at Lucy, and she rolled her eyes, exactly as he would expect. A vile taste coated all his throat, like antibiotics, ocean water, and hospital food all in one pasty liquid. He was nervous, and sometimes when he was nervous, he got a bad taste in his mouth. This was probably that.

The look in Lucy's eyes took every bad feeling away.

He hadn't seen that look in months. The adorable look of admiration and attraction. When they were together, when she had loved him, before everything had gone wrong with one bad turn, she had given him that sweet look every day.

Lying was ok.

"Y'know, that would be fun, yeah," Lucy replied.

"Friday night, eight?" Emmet didn't miss a beat.

"Sounds good."

"Cool. Hey, I gotta go, my friend needs help detonating a bomb or something." Emmet hardly thought she would believe him, but it sounded like something Rex would say, and maybe even do, and that was the point.

As he walked out the kitchen, Lucy trailed next to him, offering a smirk. "Dramatize much?"

"All the time. Hey, Unikitty! I'm gonna go, I'll see ya later!" No response came from upstairs, and Emmet shrugged before turning to Sweet. "See ya later, kid." In a brief moment, when Lucy had turned away to look at a text on her phone, Emmet whispered, "Thanks for the Systar System technology or whatever to disguise my cast."

Sweet nodded, her smile worn and shaky. "No problem, just remember it wears off every two hours, then it will pop back up."

"Well, I guess I'll see you Friday, right?" Lucy walked back over to the whispering pair, who knew how and when to shut up to look only half-suspicious. Again, she looked straight into Emmet's eyes, a small, shy smirk on her face. Emmet was liable to melt right then and there.

"You got it." With an incredible amount of restraint, Emmet bid no real farewells, and walked out the door with one last wink at Lucy.

As Lucy walked off, muttering to herself about who-knew-what, Sweet groaned, slammed her head against the wall, and dialed Benny's number.

"Benny? Yeah, it's me. Can you pick me up? I need to go to a playground or something. Thanks. Love."

#

_September 15__th_

"Maybe you should call Emmet."

"Huh?"

Lucy hardly heard whatever Unikitty's suggestion was, but she knew that Unikitty's suggestions were more often commands she just hadn't put the effort into yelling. As her roommate came out onto the still-hot porch, soaking up the summer that was left in mid-September, Lucy asked, "What did you say? I couldn't hear you over the heat, seriously, I'll be glad when winter comes."

Ignoring the comment, Unikitty repeated, shuffling her feet yet staring Lucy down, "Maybe you should call Emmet. You guys have talked in weeks, and, _again, _no one even knows why you're giving each other the silent treatment."

"It's not the silent treatment." Lucy put her lemonade on the ground before the double-decker porch swing, paused, and considered _why _exactly she hadn't spoken to her maybe-friend. She took a lingering time to sit backup, choose her words, and reply, "After that friend-date we had, things are just a little uncomfortable between us."

It took too much restraint for Unikitty to not hit the wall. "Things can't be uncomfortable between you if you aren't talking. Right now, things are nonexistent between you two."

"What do you want me to do, Unikitty? Call him up and ask if he wants to get ice cream?"

"Yes!"

If there was one thing Lucy hated, besides the fifty-three other things she despised, it was losing. She smirked. "Fine, get me a phone."

"Here ya go!" Unikitty pulled a phone from behind her back, already dialed and ringing Emmet's number. Lucy stared at it. "Don't ask."

After a moment, a moment that drove Unikitty mad and gave Lucy butterflies she didn't want to ever think about, Emmet picked up, and his voice rang out through the speaker. "Hello?"

"Hey, Emmet, it's Wyldstyle." She mentally groaned. Did her own alias still have to taste foreign on her tongue and give her pause every time she said it? "Look, I know it's short notice, but can you come meet me for ice cream or something? I think we should talk."

Unikitty smiled. He lungs released their death-grip on her ribcage, and she let out a sigh. Everything was going to be ok.

"Uh, sorry Lucy, but I can't. I've got…other stuff."

The words, drenched in light-level static and muffled by the miles between them, still rang out clear enough to jumpstart Unikitty's heart.

Lucy recovered as fast as she could. "Oh, uh, ok. I guess I'll see you some other time, then?" As Unikitty hardly tried to cover the anxious bite on her lip, Lucy stood up, turned off the speaker, and brought the phone to her ear.

"Yeah, sure, sounds fun!"

Why was her heart racing? Did her vision have to stand a full foot away from her head? Why did disappointment taste so bad on her tongue? Why did her steps onto the backyard feel like someone else's feet? "Ok. Hey, uh, Emmet?"

"Yeah?"

"We're…we're ok, right?"

There was a pause.

"…of course we are, Wyldstyle."

The smile, though no one could see it, was forced. "Ok, good, just checking. And…" This time, Lucy was sure the breath had flown from her lungs. "Call me Lucy ok see ya bye!"

She had never hung up a call faster.


	10. Decisions and Consequences

**A/N: THANK YOU FOR ALL THE REVIEWS! They mean so much to me, you guys are the best Ok, and I know I kinda drove everyone crazy with the last update, but… *pauses, thinks hard* Yeah, I got nothing. But seriously, just stay with me here XD. OH, I realized that I completely messed up the dates from the last chapter, so I went back and fixed them, SO sorry about that! Ok, NOW we're done XD. ENJOY!**

* * *

_September 16__th_

"This is a terrible idea."

"I know."

"Do you know how many things can go wrong?"

As Emmet sprayed a sticky, absorbent Systar System liquid across his cast, Unikitty watched in contemplative, jittery, motherly silence. The material bulged quickly, paused, wavered and seemed to liquefy in midair, bubbled, before shrinking, sticking to his leg, and melding to a navy blue. Emmet smiled and peered up at his best friend, in the way someone who is too high up in the clouds not to laugh at everything. "Uh, I'd say about fifty-six."

With no mirth, Unikitty replied, "I counted sixty-two. What if Lucy finds out?"

"I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."

Unikitty curled up in a protective balloon Emmet's couch, recently upgraded to double-decker status. "Will it help anything if I ask you not to do this?"

Standing up, Emmet shook his leg, stretched it, and planted it firm on the ground. He smiled at Unikitty. She saw stubble dots, marker as cheek bones, and every Rex-feature painted on in thick marker. She curled tighter as Emmet replied, "Probably not, but you're welcome to try!"

"You know Lucy. What is she going to say when you tell her?"

"I'm not going to tell her," Emmet replied. Unikitty grimaced at the firm determination in his voice. That was the same determination of someone who would stick with a plan until it ruined everything beyond repair, and Emmet had just enough persistence to be that person. She hopped off the couch as he mumbled, as though he needed her to hear but couldn't stand if she did, "She doesn't need to know, and it would only hurt both of us if she did."

"Well," Unikitty forced as much venom as her sweet voice would allow. "Won't it be a fun wedding day when you two stand up at the altar and she finds out you're a completely different person."

The look in Emmet's eyes as he turned to her, while he held back animosity and anger with her lack of trust, still bit down at Unikitty heart. He stared at her like he hated her. Of course he didn't. Emmet didn't hate anyone.

Unikitty had to be calm. Though the question burned in her heart and left scalding scratches on her throat, begging in wailing screams to be let out, she let it simmer until she could ask, calmly, "Emmet, why did you say no when Wyldstyle asked you to meet up with her?"

No response.

Was he trying to play hard-to-get? Because now wasn't the time. Was he falling out of love with her? Because that wasn't possible. Was the idea of her falling in love with Rex more stable than falling for him? Because that was ridiculous.

"Emmet?"

"I was scared."

Oh.

"Of?" Unikitty stepped closer to her best friend, carefully and with pause, as if he could explode any moment.

"Her. Messing up. Ruining everything. When I'm Rex, if I mess up, I don't get the consequences."

Finally, he turned away from her in favor of the window. Droplets of foggy rain raced each other for the windowsill, and he followed each one.

"Emmet, do you know what love is?"

_She thinks I'm stupid._

Maybe he should have just left all together. Maybe he should have stolen any chance of replying, walked out, and ignored his best friend existed. How could she ask him that?

Unikitty breathed in the musky rain that seeped through the window. Her eyes fluttered along with her lungs, yet her stomach refused to release the butterflies that she _knew _were there, and she couldn't feel nervous even though she _knew _she was supposed to, and she _knew _Emmet was just waiting to holler at her.

If two people had ever discussed what love was, if two people had ever discussed the sappiest of things, it was Emmet and Unikitty.

"You know, so say it."

Emmet shot her a pained look. She returned it and stood still.

"…to love is to will the good of another. Thomas Aquinas."

Unikitty smiled. "Thank you."

"But…but I love…I want to be with her." Light, trickling tears stained the corners of Emmet's eyes.

"I know," Unikitty made her words delicate and gentle, and she approached Emmet carefully, like walking up to a villain clutching a rifle in his hand who had just started to show a sliver of doubt. "And I'm not saying this is awful, or even a terrible plan, but we're not living in a soap opera. You have to think about Lucy's feelings down the road."

Empty yet choked sobs ran up his throat. "I…I love her…"

**Beep…Beep… **

Though Unikitty hated the moment the phone chose to interrupt, she peeked at the screen, and Lucy's number flashed across the screen.

"I got it."

"You sound like you've been crying. And why is she calling on a different phone?"

Emmet gave no response, and he picked up the phone, took a deep breath, answered with such a faked greeting that Unikitty nearly gagged. "Yeah?"

"Uh, Rex?"

_Dang it._

Unikitty stared at Emmet, and for a moment her panic took over, gripped the reins, and jolted him back in control. He made a 'don't worry' motion to Unikitty, lowered his voice, and replied, "Yeah, it's me, what's up?"

"Not much, and I'm really sorry, but I can't make it tonight."

"Don't give me that look," Emmet mouthed silently as his best friend smirked triumphantly.

"Oh, uh, that's fine, are you alright?"

There was a pause.

"...yeah, I'm ok, something just came up. Can we move this to next Friday?"

If Lucy could hear the whizzing of Unikitty's arms and head as she desperately flailed around, shaking her head and whisper-yelling 'NO!" over and over again, they were in big trouble. "Yeah, that's fine. See ya, Wyldstyle."

"Bye."

The moment he hung up, Emmet had to deal with a consequence he had gotten to know very well in recent months, more commonly known as Unikitty's Enraged Disappointment. He held up a hand before she could begin, collapsed down in a chair, and sat patiently.

"Can I go?"

Emmet nodded.

"YOU'RE INSANE!"

This went on for some time, and Emmet continued listening with one ear to his best friend's lecture, as she spoke of things like 'Are you insane?' and 'you must want her to hate you!'. She reprimanded him for going back on their whole talk, she hollered her frustration, and at the end, her words were hardly an exhausted mumble.

"Sometimes, Emmet, I really wonder about you."

"You done?"

"...yes."

Emmet's face hardly lifted, and he forced a weak smile before rubbing the top of his best friend's head. "Thanks for trying, Unikitty."

She purred despite herself.

"You're too nice, has anyone ever told you that?"

"All the time."

#

Maybe she was just stupid.

Only stupid people, people who didn't think about consequences of their actions, would do something like this. She had told him, herself, and everyone around them that they were nothing. They were supposed to be more than nothing. She had practically shouted from the rooftop that she hated him.

And now, outside his door and getting some very odd looks in the hallway, as Lucy recalled mentioning how they were 'just friends' every other minute, it seemed a little harsh.

It had to be guilt. She was guilty, through no fault of her own, because this was a man she had known and loved in another life whose entire world had been ripped out from under his feet. She was a good person, so this guilt was what made her want to spend time with him.

_Maybe I like spending–_

_NO._

_Maybe he could be a nice fri–_

_STOP. _

Lucy winced.

She wouldn't let the thought, the idea, that she enjoyed spending time with him so much that she broke a date to go see him enter her mind. It was too absurd. It was guilt. She felt guilty, and that's why she was here, with a stomach shuddering and a mind-frame of someone who desperately needed to take a nap.

_What's the game plan, Lucy? Go in there and ask him to hang out even though he already said no?_

_Yes?_

Curse that stupid, sarcastic voice inside her head.

This wouldn't be a date. She really, again, because of guilt, just wanted to know if he was alright. Unikitty had said she was going to hang out with him, but she didn't hear anything in the apartment, so maybe he was in such a terrible mood that she had given up. Maybe Lucy would be the one to make him feel better. That would be nice.

She just had to do it. That was the only way anything would ever happen.

Though half of her mind raged against the other half, though everything in her told her not to, though she knew with her whole heart something bad was about to happen, Lucy knocked firmly on the door. A tidal wave of nauseating anxiety ripped through her stomach. She counted to ten as Emmet, presumably, made his way to the door.

The door pulled back.

"Wyldstyle?" Unikitty's typical, sunshine greeting smile was replaced by a cocked brow and tilted head. "What are you doing here?"

As she heard shuffling, clunking, and general havoc behind her best friend, Lucy replied, "Uh, I just… I wanted to…"

It was no use.

Unikitty smiled wider than a middle schooler told she didn't have to get braces.

"You came to see Emmet?!" The end of her sentence crashed through the ceiling, and Lucy trembled back. This was a stupid idea. Now Unikitty was going to be all over her for the rest of eternity, Emmet would get the wrong idea, and she would be more confused than ever.

"Uh, yeah. I just wanted to see–"

_If he wanted to go out for ice cream._

_If he wanted to hang out._

_If they could get to know each other – again._

_If they could be friends. _

Lucy bit her tongue, huffed, and finished, "–if he was alright."

"Oh, hi, Lucy!" Emmet's chipper voice and cute smile poked out from behind Unikitty, and moved in front of his friend, who was all too happy to let the two get closer. "Uh, what are you doing here? Not that it's a bad thing, I just don't think you've been here…ever." As Emmet's mind shrugged its shoulders, told him it had no idea what to do, and left him and his biting stomach to fend for themselves, Unikitty fueled the fire and stepped into the kitchen. At an eavesdropping distance, of course.

Were her palms sweaty? They had to be, because Lucy couldn't get a grip on the doorframe she desperately needed to clutch. "Yeah, I was just…I wanted to see…I was wondering…."

Her gaze escalated from the floor to meet his, and in a fraction of a second, their stares were locked.

_No._

Lucy broke her gaze away and mumbled out, "…I wanted to make sure you were ok."

Never before had Lucy seen a man lose all hope in his heart in one instant.

"Oh, uh, thanks. Yeah, I'm fine, right, Unikitty?" No reply came from the princess who was, at the moment, extremely angry at her female best friend. Emmet turned back to Lucy, rubbing the back of his neck, and looking anywhere but her eyes, even as she shifted and tilted her head to capture his gaze once more.

"Ah, ok, well, I'm glad." On a whim, an odd, fantastical whim, Lucy reached out and grabbed Emmet's forearm. "So, I'll see you around?"

Finally, that cute smile shone, for her and her alone. "Uh, yeah. Thanks…" Emmet swallowed hard. "…Lucy."

Lucy smiled.

"Bye."

"Bye."

The door shut.

Unikitty looked at her best friend, whose eyes had yet to return to their natural size and heart had yet to stop using his ribcage as a punching bag. She moved from the kitchen to his side, each step deliberately silent and padded, until kneeling down at his side. No words were said for the first moments, and she waited for the victim – or hero – to voice the thoughts she could not, and did not want to, imagine.

"She likes me," Emmet murmured, a smile crossing his lips.

"Agreed."

The smile faded. "I think she likes Rex more."

"Disagreed."

Silence permeated the conversation once more, and Emmet stood up, his lips upturning and falling as thoughts, memories, and ideas rolled across his mind. Unikitty watched in agony as his hands fingered the Rex costume, as if Emmet held their world's fate in his hands. She swallowed a thick boulder down her throat. "Well?"

Something like mischievous boyhood crossed Emmet's face, but for some reason, he looked more like a strange man than her best friend. "Goodnight, Unikitty." With that, and a smile, Emmet walked into the bedroom and shut the door.


	11. Points of View

**A/N: THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS! I'm so glad there are still LM people out there XD. Here's the next chapter, and to anyone who's not a Rex/Lucy person, just hang on here with me for a little longer XD THANKS!**

* * *

_September 23__rd_

If, a week ago, thoughts and feelings had whirled around in Emmet's mind and toyed with his affections like a cruel dame, one that he could name and point to, they had backed into a corner with a pointed hat as he knocked at Lucy's door.

He was _good._

Emmet had not spoken to Lucy in a week. Rex had called Lucy every day. Emmet stayed in his apartment. Rex went out and took pictures at a skateboard park to send to Lucy, though Emmet still got the scratch on his elbow. As far as Lucy knew, Emmet was off doing who-knew-what, and Rex was the most eligible guy in town.

"One second!"

That voice, the sweet, melodious tint of someone who could still sing very well even though she chose not to, still melted Emmet's heart and dissolved him to nothing.

Immediately, as trampled steps and muffled voices whispered to him from behind the door, the facade of Rex melted away, and the physical attributes he had applied meant nothing. They helped him none when sweat broke down his neck, when his heart clobbered against the whole neighborhood, and when his stomach played a shivering game of hide-and-seek in his ribcage.

How in the world was he supposed to play Rex when Lucy's voice, no longer over a speaker or dictated to a text, reduced him to nothing but a bumbling idiot?

That little voice inside him, the one that almost always had his back, whispered in a terribly frightened voice, "Run! Run away!"

The door peeled back, and there, Emmet's vision of beauty and perfection stood, smiling lightly with a hand stuck deep in her pocket. She muttered something, but he couldn't hear, and bounced her raven hair from side to side, taunting and mocking him. _Remember your old life, Emmet? When you and Lucy watched romantic movies and kissed under moonlight on Friday? When this door was the way to take out the trash, not the window through which you visited this woman through a mask of insecurity? Remember, Emmet?_

"You look _amazing," _Emmet blurted. The words distracted and cracked his whirling mind. He deepened his voice much too far, for fear at first it had been too high. "I mean, uh, you look nice."

Lucy snickered. "Smooth, Rex. C'mon in, I'm almost ready, Unikitty's here."

Ignoring the flood of memories bombarding him from all sides, as they did whenever he entered the house, Emmet followed her in, shut the door, and sat on the couch. Rex would not sit, he reminded himself, as he leaned back and put one foot up on the table, while the action sent his shoulders spiked up like a cat.

Lucy vanished upstairs, and Unikitty appeared not a moment later. At this point in time, not the best trade in the world.

"Oh, well, look who it is," Unikitty greeted flatly, eyeing the man before her with a strange mix of disappointment, sympathy, and a ticked-off attitude. "It's Rex, here to take Emmet's place in the world. Tell me, is he going to start watering Planty too?"

"Unikitty…" Emmet warned, his voice back in the correct range. He sat up, dropped his leg from the table, and shifted to face his miffed best friend. If everything in his plan went to heck, he needed Unikitty on his side. "C'mon, please don't be mad?"

The look on her face told him she wasn't mad, but anything but happy. "Not mad. Disappointed."

A chuckle rose up in his voce. "I'll take it."

"Ok, sorry about that, I'm ready." Lucy came bounding down the stairs and landed neatly at Unikitty's side. Emmet dropped his voice, meaning he lowered his collar bone in false belief that would help, and kicked up his feet once more.

"Hey, you look great!" Emmet stood up and stepped over to her side, eyed her hand, and in one swift move, took it in his.

Just like that.

"Well, I'll see you later, Unikitty!" Lucy began to walk towards the door, with Emmet melting in her presence, but a blush-flash blocked their way, planted her feet firmly in the ground, and glared at Emmet. _Hard._

Emmet's eyes widened at the princess. _Unikitty, please, I know what I'm doing. _

She wouldn't. She wouldn't ruin everything because she thought it was a bad idea. That wasn't Unikitty. Unikitty was far too sweet to do something like that. Unikitty wasn't…_mean _enough to do something like that. He had to believe that.

"Uh, you ok?" Lucy waved a hand before her friend's face, but she continued her death glare at Emmet. Neither moved.

_I'm doing this for your own good._

Emmet's heartbeat spiked and gave out.

_No, she'll hate me. I can't take that._

Panic seized up, grabbed Emmet's ribcage like metal bars and shook him. The image of having to marry someone else if he ever wanted a family trickled in. The idea of being alone for the rest of his life seeped down. He saw Lucy hating him for the rest of his life.

Unikitty opened her mouth and shut her eyes.

She held his future in her hands, and was about to throw it into the fire.

"Well, we'll see ya!" With as gentle a hand as he could muster, Emmet put a hand on Unikitty's shoulder and shoved her out of the way, fast enough to avoid apologizing through his eyes, but slow enough that he saw the undeniable pain her face.

"Ok, bye Unikitty!" Lucy, unaware that anything had transpired, waved to Unikitty, and walked out the door, letting Emmet catch it behind her.

Nothing but hurt lay in Unikitty's eyes.

_Be Rex._

Without a word, Emmet walked out the door and shut it with a firm hand.

#

"C'mon, you got it!"

"No, no, I can't do it!"

"Yes, just…there, come on, YES!"

As pure excitement, pent up in just a few minutes exploded through Sweet, she grabbed Benny by the waist and hugged him tighter than he knew she could. The pinball machine continued to rant and rave with colorful banners and lights about his high score, and even the slightly-annoyed people in the diner found their reactions cute.

"That was _the _best pinball run I've ever seen, and I come from a planet where we have pinball machines that play themselves." Sweet continued to gush about Benny's win, and her boyfriend made a large, bright mental note that arcade games were a quick, surprisingly easy way to her heart.

"I've been playing since I was a kid, when I had already built a spaceship out of everything, this was like the controls of a spaceship." Benny chuckled, and Sweet giggled right with him. She was possibly the only girl on the planet that didn't think he was weird, at least one some level.

They continued chatting about this and that, meaning they raved about spaceships and the cosmos in general, as they sat down in a quiet corner of the diner. Benny began to bring up the annual Halloween party (the one that he was pretty sure would still take place) when she clutched his forearm, hunkered down, and pointed across the way. "Look, it's Wyldstyle and Emmet! Or, Rex."

"Huh?" For a man whose mind had been on spiders and costumes, that was somewhat of an odd conversation switch. He followed Sweet's hand, and across the diner, Emmet walked up to the pinball machine with total confidence. On some level, Benny hoped Emmet would beat his score, just to impress Lucy. Besides, it wasn't like Benny couldn't beat it again with one hand tied behind his back. "Wow, I can't believe he's actually doing it!"

"She was all over him at the house, it was kind of weird, but you can't really blame him, right?" Sweet brushed her metallic, reflective hair behind her ear, folded her hands together and rested her chin atop them. "I don't know. I feel so bad for Emmet, but Lucy's gonna kill him when she finds out."

Benny nodded quickly. "Cold-blooded murder, unless he can run to Middle Zealand fast enough."

The two continued their people-watching, specifically of Emmet and Lucy. As Emmet played, Lucy had gradually moved to rest on his shoulder, and they could see, even from several feet away, that his whole body tensed at the touch.

"He's flushing like the Plax Spaceship model number 4893."

"Exactly!"

Just as Benny was about to make another observation, Emmet and Lucy ditched the pinball machine, and he pushed a menu at Sweet and hid beneath his own. "Hide!"

"Why?" Sweet left her menu down, and struggled to see over Benny's.

"Because I can't–"

"Hey, we know you guys from somewhere, right?" Emmet, in an over-confident Rex impression, sauntered up to the table and smiled overly-white teeth. Sweet backed up a little.

Letting his menu collapse to the table, Benny shot a 'You'll understand in a second' look before waving to Emmet and Lucy. "Uh, hey Lucy! Rex, is it?" Lying felt awful in his tongue. It made him feel like he had to confess to the whole world, just so he could have a clear conscious. There was a reason Lucy never got a surprise party. She could always tell when Emmet was lying, and Benny had an awful habit of confessing things.

Like, _everything._

Sweet, oblivious to Benny's odd trait, poured on the act as hard as she could. "Hi, guys! Aw, you two are so cute together! Hold onto this one, Wyldstyle!" Even as she felt like emotionally throwing up the memory of her words, she smiled, and Rex didn't seem to mind, even if Emmet was dying on the inside.

"Don't worry, Sweet. Hey, you two have fun, alright?" Emmet began leading Lucy to a table, and she bid goodbyes as Emmet shot Benny a harsh look that resembled the words, 'shut up' a bit more harshly than he had intended.

Once they were a safe distance away, Benny finally exhaled. "My _gosh _that was awful! See, this is why we can't talk to them when he's doing that because I can't lie! I'm gonna need therapy if I even have to be in the same rule as Wyldstyle and not blow this secret! I never could lie, even when I was a kid–"

Reaching across the table, Sweet quickly kissed Benny.

"There, that should shut you up for a good half hour. Let's see, what do you want? I think I'm getting the chocolate milk shake."

#

He was stupid.

They were both stupid.

Then again, there wasn't much else to say. Anything Unikitty thought about the situation had already been hashed over in her mind and with Emmet three times over, and at this point, it was too exhausting to even think about them. So, Unikitty did what she always did when she was depressed:

She went back to a happier time.

The box wasn't hidden particularly well, but Lucy had yet to find it, almost to Unikitty's disappointment. And if she found her digging through it today, then, so be it.

The container in question was an old shipping box, and though Unikitty could hardly recall what had been ordered at the time, it remained a staple in the house for some time. Emmet had not brought it up when he moved out, and Unikitty didn't mention it. She wanted it. She wanted the memories, especially if no one else did.

Dragging it, pushing it, and pulling with all her non-furious might, Unikitty was able to convince the bowling-ball weighted box out into the living room. Albums, photos, trinkets, stuffed animals, pillows, this-and-thats all filled the box way past it's brim, and Unikitty collapsed down next to it, sneezing briefly at the premature dust.

The memory box brought a brief smile to her face.

Unikitty pulled out a picture. Emmet was fast asleep on the swing, and Lucy was tying his hands to the chain so she could push him. Unikitty _had _said to wake him up in the most creative way.

_"Shh, you'll wake him!" Lucy giggled through her own words as she carefully, gently approached her victim._

_"Isn't that the point?" Unikitty positioned with the camera, prepared to take several pictures of Emmet's awful reaction to being swung awake – literally. Unikitty watched as Lucy used the stretchy toys they had won out of quarter machines to tie his hands to the swing chain and made sure they were secure, before Unikitty snapped the picture._

Clipped to the side of the box, Unikitty found an older, worn photograph, picked up and handled too many times. At first, she wondered what it could have been to receive so much love, but the first glimpse at the correct side explained everything. It was a snapshot of Emmet holding a scorpion at a wildlife center, and looking absolutely terrified as he did. Lucy was off to the side, pride and love radiating off her face as she laughed her head off.

_"Lucy, I can't do this!" Emmet shook his head over and over again as Lucy and Unikitty dragged him to the front of the crowd and asked if he could hold the scorpion. Lucy gave him a quick kiss, but inside, he didn't think that was equal compensation for holding a deadly bug._

_Unikitty gently nudged him. "Aw, sure you can!"_

_"And remember," Lucy said as she backed up. "You have the total support of everyone not holding a huge, fatal insect."_

_The man instructed Emmet to hold his hands out, and placed a small, ebony scorpion in his hands. Emmet whimpered and froze, and Unikitty took the picture as Lucy cracked up laughing in the corner._

Unikitty dug deeper and pulled out a small, plush stuffed-bear. At first, Unikitty could hardly recall its name, but the memories flooded back in an instant, like the toy carried them with it. Mr. Snuggles' owner was more-or-less unknown, but it had often become household arguments that Emmet more-or-less egged on.

_Emmet, Lucy and Unikitty walked up to the next of several carnival games, where Emmet pointed to a small teddy bear and slapped down five dollars. "What do I have to do to win that one?"_

_"Ah," the man running the ride said, who had a beard that could compete with MetalBeard's, grinned in a mischievous way that the gang would remember as the start of all the trouble. "Want one for your girl?"_

_"Yup!"_

_"Alright just hit four balloons in a row." The man stepped back and displayed a wall of colorful balloons, varying in color and size. Emmet took aim with four darts all in the same hand, took a breath, and threw all four in an instant._

_They landed in aa perfect row, popping four balloons._

_"Emmet, how'd you do that?!" Unikitty was the first to speak, and she hugged Emmet tightly in congratulations. "That was amazing!" Emmet affectionately patted her head, and she purred quietly._

_Lucy, somewhat drunk on cotton-candy sugar but still holding onto her wits, pressed a kiss to Emmet's lips and grabbed onto his arm. "I always knew you were good for something," she mumbled playfully. Emmet rolled his eyes but the two shared a sweet look._

_The man handed a teddy bear to Emmet. "Nice job kid, now get to another game, you'll put me out a' business."_

_As they walked, Emmet debated names in his head for the prize, all while Lucy ad Unikitty secretly waited to gain custody of the soon-to-be legendary stuffed animal. _

_"Mr. Snuggles!" Emmet declared, probably a bit loud for a crowded carnival. "Ok, here ya g–"_

_Before Emmet could deliver it to its rightful owner, the smell of greasy, too-long carnival French fires reached the trio, and his whole face lit up. "Uh, I'll be right back, I gotta go get some food!" Before he made a mad dash for the stand, Emmet threw Mr. Snuggles up in the air like a basketball jump ball, and two girls grabbed onto it._

_After some relatively polite debating, Lucy and Unikitty found Emmet in the carnival tent, setting up three places for them. They explained it to him in blunt terms, asking him who was 'his girl' and who he had intended Mr. Snuggles for. A mischievous look crossed over Emmet's face, one that Unikitty hardly recognized and Lucy didn't like, and he said, "Oh, so you _both _want it?"_

_"Yes!"_

_"Duh!"_

_In a mockingly-bad impression of one who has forgotten something, Emmet rubbed his head and scrutinized the plushie. "Huh, you know, I don't even remember!"_

_"EMMET!"_

That had been three years ago, and to this day, Emmet had never declared who he had intended the prize to go to. He asked them, often mockingly, why they couldn't just share Mr. Snuggles, and this usually resulted in pillows being throw at Emmet's face, which led to a tickle fight, which almost _always _brought the trio to a movie night.

Tears started to fight at Unikitty's eyes for dominance, but she just clutched Mr. Snuggles to her chest.

Before any more memories could take a crack at Unikitty's emotions, the door quietly unlocked, swung open, and Lucy walked in. Her face was unreadable. A smile, but with Lucy, a smile could mean just about a million things, and Emmet was really the only one who could decipher how she felt.

The door shut quietly, and still, no one said anything. Was Lucy waiting for her to talk? Because she wouldn't. She wasn't going to ask her how it went, or if they kissed, or if she liked him. No. They may have been best friends who shared almost every secret under the sun, but she wouldn't be alright with this.

Lucy shot a look at Unikitty, who continued rummaging through some box. Was she still upset? She was allowed to date. Nothing with Emmet or Unikitty, or how mad they would be at her, should impact how she lived her life.

"What's that?" Lucy's mouth ran off without her brain's permission, but on some level, it was worth it to see Unikitty look confused rather than miffed.

"Hm?"

Pointing to the box, Lucy sat down next to Unikitty, already deducing what some of the contents were. "The box. What is it? Looks like…"

"…memories," Unikitty admitted with a sigh, one that was _slightly _overdramatized. What? Unikitty needed every bit of help she could get. "From the last few years and such."

Without asking Unikitty or her own brain if it was a good idea, Lucy pulled out a picture. "What's this?"

Unikitty leaned over and looked at the snapshot. Lucy had picked out one of the better pictures, or three-years-ago-April-first. Emmet was holding his hand out to Lucy, and she was about to grab it, but what each did not know was that both wore a joy-buzzer, and if you had been there, and listened closely, you could hear Unikitty's laughter through the photo. "That's April Fool's Day, you both had a buzzer on your hands."

"Ouch."

"I know."

The two continued looking at snapshots, even laughing along the way a little. Unikitty would explain the memory attached to a stuffed animal or photo, like when Emmet had been so busy planning Lucy's birthday party he forgot the gift, and she loved the drugstore monster-truck toy even more than anything else she had gotten. A picture that seemed to resonate particularly well with Lucy was one of herself fast asleep on Emmet's chest, who had passed out sometime before, his hand in the chip bag and hers on the remote.

"You two loved to do movie night, but I don't remember the last time you actually stayed up until midnight," Unikitty laughed.

Whether Lucy purposefully pulled out the next picture or not, we'll never know, but the next one she asked about was one that gifted a sprinkling of pink powder across her freckles. "Oh, that's Christmas Eve, our first one after the wars and stuff." In the snapshot, Emmet held Lucy by the waist and had begun kissing her beneath the mistletoe, and even through the picture and kiss, you could see Lucy grinning.

Nothing broke her gaze from the picture, and Lucy continued to stare at it, like a teenager who had found a toy from their childhood.

Unikitty said nothing, but something about the glitter in Lucy's eyes and the way she refused to move to another picture told her this was very, _very _good.

"You…you want to keep this one? I have plenty, and probably a copy of that one somewhere," Unikitty asked, making sure to keep her voice as soft and unobtrusive as possible.

Lucy opened her mouth to refuse, to say that was ridiculous, to put it back and never look at such a picture again, but something gave her pause. Was it her stupid heart? Was it something she felt she owed to Emmet? No one knew.

"You know, I'd–"

The phone buzzed, and Rex's number (or Emmet's secondary number) flashed across the screen.

Confusion raced across her eyes, and decision covered up whatever was supposed to come after.

Lucy scooped up the phone, handed the picture back to Unikitty and shook her head. "Thanks, but they're not my memories anymore." Sliding the phone on, Lucy forced her voice, which had taken on a melancholy tint for a reason she didn't understand, to sound chipper.

Unikitty stared at the picture.

Stupid memories.


	12. Smug

**A/N: WAZZUP? Thank you guys SO MUCH for the reviews, ya'll are awesome, thank you so much for sticking with his story. And I PROMISE that the Rex part of this story is almost over(SPOILERS IN PARENTESIS the next chapter is the last one with Emmet being Rex) so please just hang on with me, the Halloween party is very important lol. This chapter is shorter, but the next one is longer and better (hopefully lol) THANKS GUYS!**

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_October 21__st_

"AH!"

"Aw, c'mon, it's not that – WHAT IN THE SYSTAR SYSTEM IS THAT?"

While Emmet had briefly been able to hide his fear under the mask of his alternate self, the image of a shark on International Geographic that looked more like something out of a science-fiction film sent his cover running in tears. Holding Lucy close against him with his face buried against her hair, and keeping his voice low, Emmet shrieked, "I didn't know things could look like that!"

"Unikitty, shut it off!"

"I CAN'T LOOK!"

"I thought you weren't watching!"

"I GLANCED!"

The reminder that Rex Dangervest probably would not have cared about seeing a shark ram it's head into a person came bubbling to the surface just as Emmet tried to close it out, so, taking a deep breath, he blindly stumbled towards the remote, knocking over things and still clutching Lucy's hand in the process. "OK, ok! I got it!" The remote felt familiar in his hands, and he moved along it until coming to the power button, and he clicked it hard enough to send it to the ground. "It's off!"

Lucy tugged her boyfriend back with a hard hand, eyes still shut. "I don't trust you! Unikitty, is it gone?"

"You think _I _trust him?"

The real nature of Unikitty's lack of trust in him pricked a small hole in his heart, but Emmet felt Lucy shift to hold him tighter, and all thoughts melted from his mind to his toes. "Guys, I promise it's gone!"

Carefully, and clutching Emmet as though she would choke him if he was lying, Lucy opened one eye to a bank screen. A sigh ran over her lips as she finally relaxed. "Ok, Unikitty, it's gone. It's official, I'm _never _watching that again!"

Remembering what Rex was like and how he would act always seemed to come a moment too late, but that never stopped Emmet from making the effort. Kicking his feet up on the table, Emmet shrugged his shoulders like someone who didn't know enough about a situation to care. "It wasn't that bad, that's nature, sweetheart!"

Offering him a gentle whack to the shoulder, Lucy replied, "You were about to sob like a baby, _sweetheart_. I'm getting popcorn, when I get back there better be something that's totally animated without a hint of nature in it."

"Kay." Emmet gave her a thumbs-up as she walked off, and she threw him a smirk. How did he survive around that woman?

Unfortunately, Unikitty ruptured Emmet's loving thoughts with a hard kick to his other shoulder. "Are you going to ask her?"

"As Rex, yeah!" The words sounded much harsher than intended, but in the end, Emmet supposed it didn't matter. Unikitty would hate him and his plan for as long as he kept it going. How long that would be, he refused to entertain.

"She might say yes to Emmet!"

"She likes Rex."

"Somewhere, deep inside her, she loves you!"

Offering her no response, Unikitty watched in meek, exhausted silence as Emmet tilted to look at the kitchen. The past few weeks ricocheted and collided with each other in his mind, exploding in fireworks that seemed to keep him alive. Racing with her at four in the morning through the woods. Watching horror movies he had to wear sunglasses and fake he was watching for. Going up into space and counting the stars. How could she expect him to throw that away?

"You know what?" Emmet grinned, and Unikitty shifted farther into her corner of the couch, curling into a protective ball. Something in Emmet's smile, if you could call it that, didn't sit right in any universe. It wasn't happy, it was conniving. It wasn't content, it was daring. It was everything Rex was and Emmet wasn't. "I'll come back here as Emmet, ask her to go to the Halloween party, and you just watch her brutally reject me. Then you'll see I'm right!"

From miles away, Unikitty saw Emmet skipping backwards on a cliff, the horizon nearing him with every step, all while he reasoned that there was a trampoline at the bottom and he would be fine. She saw him hanging above a tank of sharks, that stupid grin on his face, stuck in the belief that if he talked to the sharks, they wouldn't tear him apart.

Before she could even mention talking him out of it, Lucy walked in, and Emmet vanished for Rex to take his place. "Hey, Wyldstyle, I gotta go."

Something that looked like disappointment flashed across her face, and Emmet, who had read Lucy's looks for years on end, knew she was holding back. What, he didn't know. "Ok, I'll see you tomorrow, right?"

Emmet leaned over, heart in throat and breath stuck in his chest, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Sick, vile truths spilled over into his mind, but he shouted over them, his movements wild and distracting. "You know it. Bye, Unikitty!"

Only a wave.

Giving his girlfriend a wink he had practiced in the mirror a hundred times before accomplishing, Emmet walked out the door, already scrubbing at the stubble on his face.

"Why do you hate Rex?" Lucy never saw any reason to beat around the bush. It wasted time, it made the build-up worse, and conversations like this were best if made short and sweet anyway. She plopped next to her friend on the couch, who, surprisingly, had not uttered a horrified defense, shouting, 'Of course I like Rex!' yet.

Shrugging, Unikitty grabbed the remote, shut her eyes, turned it on, and switched to the kid's channel. A careful peek told her a retro cartoon was on, and she sighed. "I don't know. He's just no replacement for Emmet, y'know?" If it was mean that she forced nipping anger at the tail of her sentence, so be it.

Lucy stared at Unikitty. Could a person say that? She felt like a parent going through a divorce with an unrelenting child who still believed in fairytales. This was messy, awful, cruel reality. She didn't like it. She didn't have to. "Unikitty," she kept her tone calm and understanding, and Lucy reached over to rub Unikitty's abrasive, freezing shoulder. She didn't move. "Emmet and I aren't getting back together."

"You've told me," she snapped. Lucy quickly drew back.

Silence sauntered into the room and sat between the two, constructing a finely-built wall that had been climbing in height and strength for some weeks now. Every time Unikitty ignored Lucy, another brick was added. Every time Lucy mentioned how great Rex was, Unikitty shoved another brick on. The two hadn't engaged in a conversation without ending in either bitter silence or shouting in weeks. Unikitty didn't tell Emmet this, and the most Lucy mentioned was that they were 'having a disagreement' before brushing it off.

Before long, the girls had lost themselves in the 70s cartoon. Somehow, watching fictional people get hit with a mallet repeatedly helped ease some tension that hitting each other with a mallet wouldn't.

"Unikitty," Lucy cut the silence in half and made a miniscule hole in the brick wall. "I'm–"

A rumbling knock at the door cut her off, and Unikitty leapt up. "Oh, that's…." Lucy's stares just reminded her of how terrible her secret-keeping skills could be in a rash moment, and she curled inward slightly. "….someone that I'll go see who."

Whether Lucy bought her awful lie or not was of little concern to Unikitty, and she dashed to the door, opened it up, and found Emmet's smug smile awfully comforting, until it reminded her that she was fighting with both her best friends at the same time over slightly different things, and Benny and Sweet just weren't suitable replacements. One sleepover had proved that last week.

"Hey, Emmet!" The tone felt fuzzy and foul on her tongue. "What are you doing here?"

Emmet, equally a bad liar until recently, shrugged. "I just wanted to ask Lucy something."

Holding down the giddy rush of finally proving she was right _and _seeing Lucy accept Emmet's offer was next to impossible, so she let Emmet in without a word but a huge smile, one she had not given him in weeks. Emmet grinned back, but a smug, 'Don't get your hopes up' lifted the corner, and her smile faltered. Could someone let her be happy for more than five seconds?

"Hey, Emmet," Lucy greeted, devoid of emotion.

Nonetheless, Emmet pushed on, relentless optimism at being right after over a month's worth of attempting to convince Unikitty boiling over. "Hi! Listen, I was just…I just wanted to ask you…"

_What are you doing, you stupid kid?_

For a reason he knew but refused to acknowledge, words wouldn't come out. They stuck to the bottom of his shoes like gum, and the more he pulled to get them out, the messier it got. "…I was just wondering, I mean, you don't have to but…" A glare thrashed over his mouth. Anger? When had he picked up that trait? Shooting a look at Unikitty, whose smile was, for once, comforting, he took in a breath and looked firmly at Lucy. "…do you want to go the Halloween party with me?"

_She was going to say no._

The pitied look on Lucy's face snapped corners of his heart he didn't know could be broken. "Oh, Emmet, I'm sorry, but I'm probably going with Rex." Her gaze shifted from him back to the TV, and on a whim, as if something extra shoved the words out of her mouth, she added, "We're just friends, Emmet. It would be kinda weird."

"EmmetcanIseeyououtsidequicklythankyou!" Unikitty grabbed Emmet by the back of the vest, swung the door open, threw him outside and followed him by slamming the door shut, all within three seconds. She could still feel confusion radiating off Lucy from inside. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but all that remained in the air was a sigh.

Emmet had nothing else to say.

"You can gloat now, you know." Unikitty gave him a gentle nudge. She swallowed thicky. "She'll say yes to Rex."

It would hurt his pride too much to ask him if he was crying.

She could only hope he didn't ask if she was doing the same thing.


	13. Terrifying Truths

**A/N: HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (Y'know, in my fanfic at least XD) Thank you guys so much for all the reviews, and this is the chapter lots of you have been waiting for, the party! ENJOY!**

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_October 31st _

Ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. Orange, black, and white. Music that creeped beneath the earth and children's sneakers pounding on the pavement like drums, earning a proud tremble from everyone's drinks. The Syspocalypstar Halloween Block Party (that expanded over half the city) had started the first 31st of October they had lived there, and no one was letting the founding trio off the hook just because their lives were in shambles.

Lights in neat rectangles, shining in neon spotlights from apartments, adorned every roadside the party touched, and a person couldn't run far enough to not hear music screeching about fright and graveyards.

Lucy, unadorned as she had persisted, weaved her way through Sony and Cher/Benny and Sweet Mayhem, slid past Batman and Watevra in matching spy gear, ducked under President Business dressed in King's attire, and said a quick hello to Scribble Cop, who had gone as an artist. Sometimes, when she watched TV or saw citizens out the window who weren't so…eccentric, she believed she needed new friends.

"UNIKITTY!" Though her throat burned with scalding coals, Lucy got Unikitty's attention. The princess turned around, sending her pajama-dinosaur costume's tail spinning. The punch-pink set off the lime scales, and once again, Lucy had to wonder what people with normal friend's lives were like. "Where's Emmet?

For the first time in weeks, Unikitty's mind wasn't curled up in one giant ball of tight, jagged stress, and Lucy's absence for the past hour was a major, happy factor. She looked Lucy up and down. No costume. In years past, she and Emmet, after some coaxing, always went as a couple costume. The pang in her heart was too familiar to hurt anymore. It only ached. "Who?"

"Emmet!"

"What about him?"

"WHERE IS HE?"

Finally, in a quiet moment in _Ghostbusters, _Lucy's question made it through. A firework shattered the ebony ink above their heads, and Unikitty shrugged. Venom bit at her eyes, and a familiar, betraying urge trickled with tense bites up through her body. Was her fur red? Could everyone see? Would people judge her?

It was rushing faster.

She bit down on her lip.

_Breathe. Like Emmet taught you._

Keeping half her throat in her chest, Unikitty replied, "How should I know? I don't think he came."

There was no reason to care. How could Lucy's mind be so uncaring, hate her so, and despise her enough to stay silent when the rest of the universe shouted at their loudest? Everything she had told him was the truth. They were just friends, going together would have been weird, and yes, Rex had asked her not fifteen minutes later. Lucy had been completely fair and honest. Everyone should have been happy with that.

So why did she feel like the dirt on the bottom of a toddler's sneakers?

No. No, she wouldn't let them win! She wasn't going to get back together with Emmet, this wouldn't be the stupid, childish happy ending everyone assumed it would be!

"Ok, thanks."

"Huh?"

Lucy just gave Unikitty a 'don't worry' gesture and weaved her way through their blob of the thousand-people crowd. If she could find Rex, if she could find the one part of her life that was new, that was post-Emmet, the one person who didn't try to shoot her with love arrows, then everything would be alright. Her stomach would stop turning inside out, her head would pick up the weight it had lost and sit back on her neck, and the universe would cease spinning.

"Wyldstyle!" his voice came with the creeping, sick, drawing beat of _This is Halloween_, and something in her heart shifted. She grinned and waved, he caught her smile, and within the minute he had gotten her in a huge hug. She clutched her arms around his neck as he laughed, burying her head in the crook of his neck. Future. _Her _future.

"Hey, this is great, isn't it?" Emmet froze as she pulled back, but it was a welcome change from shivering and shuddering. This year was unlike the past – the plastic vampire's fangs dripped blood, he couldn't discern which spiders were fake and which were real, and the drinks tasted like cement. Obviously, he had to get in on the planning next year, no matter how his life was falling apart.

The woman before him, unfortunately just as dressed up as he was, smirked. "Are you scared?"

"Scared? Are you kidding? My little sister had scarier decorations. Weren't we going to, uh, get a real guy to turn into a zombie or something?" Rex's voice practically screeched in his head that this was the most awful interpretation, let alone imitation, of him in the universe, and Emmet hissed back that he already knew. When had he begun to talk to Rex in his mind?

Nodding. She was nodding. But not in the sweet, loving way she sometimes did, it was in the way when she had a straight flush in poker, when she wouldn't tell him what she got him for Christmas, and when she had the perfect plan to get back on the cashier who gave her a funny look. "I don't like that look," he gently informed her.

"I was just thinking…"

"That's never good."

"…there's an old, supposedly haunted house over on Cricket Lane…"

_Say no. Say it sounds boring. Say you have better things to do. Say you'd rather kiss her._

Lucy grinned.

"Well, I've lived a good life, right?" Emmet broke into a smile, grabbed Lucy's hand in his, and they took off running through the streets, weaving through the dancing crowd, and spilling people's drinks for them. Lucy ran around a corner, swung Rex around by her hand, and when the crowd had thinned out, they spun around each other in a fantastical spinning top, ready to fly in any instant.

Through laughter that kept her lips parted for several seconds, laughter she hadn't felt in ages, Lucy spotted a house, cottage-inspired and dripping with muddy paint. "Wait, Rex, I found it!"

"Huh?"

In the confusion, Rex titled too far, Lucy went with him, and they flew into a hill, Emmet-first. Lucy landed on top of him, and despite the furious shade of Halloween blood on his face that went straight down to his toes, Lucy smirked once more. Evilly, Emmet added.

Panting, Lucy grinned. "You ready?"

Emmet shot a look up the lane. The house looked like your classic 'haunted house', distorted. It had one roof, but it soared several stories high. The gates, once iron, had rusted over. Plants had overgrown and tangled their weaving clutches around the home, memories of years past with each one.

"Yeah," he murmured. "Let's go."

The walk up was silent, if you don't count Emmet gazing at Lucy any chance she was distracted. This was all he had ever wanted. He wanted to be with her, to do stupid things by her side, sit in movie theaters by themselves and react as loudly as possible, run in empty school yards and play tag, leave notes in library books, he wanted it all and had it, but that stupid, jittery, aching feeling still scratched at every corner of his stomach.

Sometimes, he hated her.

He couldn't use her name whenever he thought that, because he couldn't believe it was true. But, in some weak moments, he reminded himself that if he had never met her, then he never would have fallen in love, never would have had seven perfect years, and never would have lost her. He never would have had to know how amazing it was to wake up in the morning with her drawing mustache on his face, meet her for lunch in the park, and run in the nighttime rainfall, imitating famous movie characters getting wet. Did he have to remember all of this? Why couldn't he have lost his memory? Then she would be going through heck on earth.

He resented her. Like she had chosen this.

Why him?

Lucy would have handled this much better.

It was always _his _problem. He was the lonely one, the one who had to change, the one with the time-traveling clone, the one who had to know everything when the love of his life was ignorant and blissful.

Why him?

Why not _her?!_

"Ok, we're here!"

The firestorm ceased. The rain stopped, the thunder rumbled instead of cackled, and lighting shuddered to strike. He stared at Lucy, feet stuck in the muddy grass, who smiled as she ran her hands up and down the gate. "Who do you think lived here?"

"Someone…and his wife," Emmet answered confidently, but with blank stare. Half his mind remained far back in his skull, struggling to catch up with the rest.

"Uh, are you ok?"

"Hm?" He turned to face her, raising an eyebrow. "What?"

From the start, he didn't like how her arms crossed over her chest. The only time he had ever seen her look like that, on the brink of anger, was when Batman had submitted her entry to a modelling contest. The result of that choice was not pretty, and it did not end with Lucy in high heels. Batman couldn't walk straight for a week.

"No, it's just that your voice usually isn't that…_high." _She held back. Lucy held her throat in her chest to keep it from hollering and losing control before she had to. On some level, she felt good for holding her emotions like that, but the blood-dripping fangs of a lion waited to roar out any second. Every moment she held back would be one worse second if everything went in the gutter. "Are you ok?" She didn't sound like she really cared.

No. Not tonight, not ever. Not ever again. Dropping his voice, again, lower than ever necessary, Emmet channeled every bit of Rex he imagined still lay inside him. "Uh, yeah, of course I am! Heh. what kinda question is that?"

Rex was bold.

Emmet reached forward, tucked his hands around Lucy's waist, and leaned dangerously close to her face. The pounding in his heart spread like a disease until it soaked all his chest. "Come on, what's all this about?"

Momentarily, she grinned back, cupping her hands on the back of his head. "I don't know," she gave as a distracted, non-answer that was perfect for when her mind was in a fritz of haywire emotions and sparking wires.

_He was going to kiss her._

Emmet smiled. Not a grin, not a smirk, but a smile.

Lucy froze.

All the blood drained from her face. Her hands went clammy and shuddered. Silence edged in and put a singular block between them, and Lucy drew back, still clutching his wrist as though she would flip him on his head any second. Emmet's smile fell. Neither spoke.

_That stupid smile._

"O-ok, I'm going to do something, and just…don't move." Lucy's form quivered under the coldest rainfall she had ever felt. Emmet froze as she reached up with her sleeve, rubbed at his face, and wiped away everything that made his face Rex.

_"You know Lucy. What is she going to say when you tell her?"_

_"I'm not going to tell her."_

Blood washed from his body and fueled the boiling look on her face. "Uh…hi?"

_"Emmet?"_

"Look, Lucy, I can explain–"

_Trust me, you can't._

The last thing he saw before she ran off was her hand colliding with his face.


	14. Out with the Old

**A/N: UPDATE! I'm ALIVE! Ok, I know my updates have been…lacking lately, and I'm super sorry. My writing in general has sort of hated me in recent weeks, and I'm working on the finale for Redamancy, which is taking an eternity and a half. I PROMISE you guys I won't abandon Redamancy without a finale, it's just gonna take some time. Anyway, enjoy this thing! THANKS!**

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It figured. It figured! I was just her luck to go through this with every single guy she met. If one wasn't an egotistical superhero, the next was a delusional construction worker with an alternate personality. On her next blind date, she was just going to run them through a mental hospital, it would only save her time.

Fuming, Lucy shoved and smacked people out of her roaring path in the crowd, looking for one victim and one victim only. If she hadn't known, Lucy would take some pleasure in telling her, if only to get some revenge. If she had known, well, Lucy was packing up and moving. Simple as that.

While the threat was, for the most part, hollow and shallow, a flicker went off, and Lucy's steps slowed beneath the moonlight.

Why was she staying in Syspocalypstar?

Her friends? Well, if Unikitty had known the whole time, then she had no best friend. If the rest of them knew, she had no friends. She had no boyfriend, she had no real connections to this place. Her memories of Emmet were gone. Whatever they were, no matter how little she cared for them now, she had lost a life, a life she would probably never get back. Maybe the only real course of action was to embrace it, to let everyone's memories drift off into the wind that would carry her to the next town over.

There, she could forget everything.

The revelation of leaving an entire life behind had brought Lucy's seething temperature back down to the October breeze, and she paced herself with the dismal, transparent clouds sliding by. Frost delicately coated the concrete in intricate patterns, reminding her of how freezing her hands were, and she shoved them in the warm caverns of her hoodie.

How long she had walked through the rapturous crowd hollering 'Ghostbusters!' every five seconds was a question Lucy didn't need to find out.

The next time she lifted her weary, bitter gaze, the house perched in her view. Home.

"Wyldstyle!"

That tone. That tone, that blunt, cruel, whiplash tone didn't match the sugary voice, and that sent a fire burning down Lucy's spine.

"What?" Spinning around, Unikitty, no longer in costume, glared with a scalding hatred that momentarily softened Lucy's nearly-frozen over emotions.

"What did you do to Emmet?!"

Of everything she could have heard, of nearly every question Unikitty could have asked her, _that's _what she said? She had to assume Unikitty had known the whole time. Unikitty wasn't dumb. Annoying, chipper, and a pain in Lucy's back at the moment, but not stupid. "What did _I _do? Unikitty, he adopted a fake personality so I would date him! That's insane!" Her words were almost a plea, a desperate beg for someone to understand, for someone to be on her side for once in this war.

"And you _slapped him?" _They were face-to-face, both in a pool of pure hatred and no longer fighting it. "Emmet's sobbing right now, he's a total mess!"

"Emmet, Emmet, Emmet." She said it like it was a curse word, and in her mind, in that moment, it was. "It's always about him! He lies, acts like a total jerk, and makes everything a mess, yet somehow it's my fault!"

Unikitty's glare softened, but not because she agreed. Not even close. Lucy froze.

Pity.

Unikitty pitied her.

"You really don't get it, do you?" A gentle glare crossed her face. Unikitty couldn't get mad at those that didn't understand.

"Get what?"

No. She wouldn't think about how she was losing her best friend, inch-by-inch, how for the first time in her life, Unikitty truly hated someone, and it was her best friend that she still loved. This wasn't a love-hate relationship, but it wasn't purely love. And that wasn't Unikitty.

What had the last months done to her?

Deep breathes.

"Emmet loved you. I can say it every day as long as we both live, but you may never understand it." Her throat, once scalding with frozen revenge, collided into a gentle hum. Her heartbeat no longer whirred in her ears, and she could finally hear Lucy's hollering pulse. "When he woke up, everything he had based his life around was gone, and you never once wanted to accept any responsibility. You acted like he was a boyfriend from first grade who had just taken everything too seriously."

The defenses were back. "I didn't ask to lose my memory!"

"There's a thing called kindness, Wyldstyle." Did she sound that way? Was this her own voice, so sarcastic and honest, coming out of her won mouth? Unikitty kept talking to distract and test it, even as her blood cringed. "No one asked you to marry him. We asked you to not treat him like dirt."

A rebuttal rose in her throat, but the image of her slapping Emmet blocked it. Unikitty had the upper-hand for once in their friendship, and Lucy had no choice but to take it.

"So what do you want me to do, Unikitty? Go up and tell him I love him?"

Unikitty shrugged quivering shoulders. "I'm not saying to do anything. I'm just saying that the next time you feel like you have no friends, remember me and Emmet."

With that, the crowd swallowed Unikitty up, and Lucy had never felt so alone beneath the dim moonlight.

#

'Emmet crying' wasn't exactly a new concept for Benny, Sweet, and Unikitty. While it took a lot to break him, while not many things crashed through the barrier, and while he usually handled it before he cried, if something _did _make him cry, the whole world would know it within the hour.

Squeezing his shoulders again, Sweet offered a warm smile. "Emmet, it's going to be ok, you just have to let Wyldstyle cool off a little bit." Benny, sitting on the other side of the huddled, tearful mass that was their best friend, tried to hide his doubting look. Sweet rolled her eyes. This was not the time for pessimism.

"I-I can't…I c-can't believe I…I did that." The meager, broken sentence was all Emmet could manage before a wracking sob grabbed hold of his spine again and pinched his throat until nothing but wisps of air could escape.

In a moment of raw panic and sisterly instinct, Sweet grabbed Emmet into her arms, hugging him tightly as Benny rubbed his back. She caught sight of Unikitty walking over, first the brief flash of something that Sweet had to assume was defensive protection, then melting concern over Emmet.

They could wait.

As soon as she was within distance, Unikitty mouthed, "He's not good, is he?"

Benny shook his head, resting against Emmet, back to back, like two boys in fifth grade.

Unikitty curled up at Emmet's feet. Her head lay against his ankle, and she let her eyes fall shut as the wind drowned out Emmet's sobs. After a moment, by the time they had all feigned sleep to satisfy their emotional exhaustion, all Unikitty could hear was the Emmet sniffling and holding back a harder onslaught of tears, Sweet's whispering words, and Benny scratching the bench with the hand that wasn't gripping Emmet's.

Was this what is would be?

Without Lucy, was this destined to be the new 'inner circle'?

Lucy losing her memory had brought too many changes, too many shifts in their hierarchy, and too many new things Unikitty wasn't ready to handle.

Emmet, Unikitty, Sweet, and Benny.

Emmet, Sweet, Benny, and Unikitty.

Sweet, Benny, Emmet, and Unikitty.

Nothing fit.

There was something wrong with every combination.

Unikitty lifted her hundred-pound gaze, rolled onto her back, and looked up at the three people she may have been destined to fill Lucy's hole with.

Benny. She liked Benny a lot – she loved every one of her friends. He was a bit jittery, a little one-dimensional until you got to know him, but wouldn't hurt a fly. He was like Emmet without the experience he had gotten being front-and –center saving the world, plus too much sugar. Come to think of it… so was she.

Sweet. A complicated relationship, she loved Sweet like a sister, and often thought of her, for better or for worse, as a younger sibling. Sometimes it seemed like Sweet wanted to do everything Unikitty did, and fill the role Unikitty had filled for the past seven years. Maybe that's because they were so similar. Either way, Sweet was kind, had a good heart, and (for the most part) knew when not to overstep her bounds. Definitely not a Lucy, but not a horrid replacement either.

Emmet? Well, she knew who he was. He was her column, her one pillar that hadn't fallen in recent months, the one person who remotely felt like she did. He was sweet, kind, and her best friend in the whole world. Just the thought made her chest loosen and her paws tighten around his feet.

Lucy may not have forgotten her, but the distance and animosity between them now seemed to mirror Emmet's situation. On her vainer side, Unikitty didn't believe either of them deserved this. They were the kindest out of the whole group. Why did this have to strike them?

"You ok?"

Sweet's voice reached down into the murky lake of Unikitty's introspection, a trap she was prone to fall into, and dragged the princes out onto dry land.

However, the question wasn't directed at her.

The feet Unikitty rested on shifted as Emmet pulled away from Sweet's embrace, and leaned heavier on Benny, as though they all had to take turns carrying his weight, emotional and physical. Would Unikitty be able to take it when it was her turn?

Shrugging, Emmet looked down at his best friend, and offered the weakest smile that, in his mind, seemed enormous for the situation. "Yeah, I th-think so. Thanks, guys."

"We're always here for you, Emmet," Benny reminded, elbowing his friend. Emmet grinned a bit brighter. As long as he didn't think of Lucy, his mood could just stand up, just bear the scalding, metal weights clinging to its wrists and ankles. He had to forget her. Like Lucy, he had to forget everything they had ever been.

"Unikitty?" It was more to distract himself than anything.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

What had seemed like such a conquest, such a battle, such a bloody, knockout fight just yesterday had now fallen. The battle was lost. She had been knocked to and her opponent was dead. Not only was there no reason nor etiquette to gloat, but she was unconscious beyond repair.

Sighing and nestling her head back against Emmet's feet, Unikitty softly replied, "Don't be."

And that was it.

Who knew how long it had been, but when a call rung out through their quiet, isolated space, Benny was asleep, Unikitty snoozed on Emmet's feet, and Emmet and Sweet were playing twenty-questions with half their consciousness dreaming.

"Emmet?"

_That _voice woke everyone up.

Across the hardened grass, concrete pathway, and flickering memories of hours ago, Lucy stood, bloodied guilt splashed across her face and emotion seeping into her hands. Three glares met her, and the fourth gaze couldn't look anywhere but the moon.

Without looking at her, and while keeping as many thoughts about Lucy's presence outside the front of his mind, Emmet observed his friends.

Unikitty huffed, crossed her arms, and refused to speak.

Benny straightened his spine as though ready for battle.

Sweet shifted, linked her arm with his, and joined Unikitty's silent rage.

While he didn't believe Lucy was the enemy, even Emmet had to admit that it was nice to have friends backing you up like this.

"Okay, I realize that you all would like me blast off the earth in a Fourth-of-July spectacle right about now, but I need to talk to Emmet."

Emmet's chest tightened.

He was tired. Beaten down against a building, bleeding inside-and-out, and the thought of talking with the person who had done it all wasn't on his list of things to do to recover. His cheek still burned.

"No." The defiant, bubble-burst in Sweet's voice popped next to him, and Emmet bit down on a smile. He would never be alone.

But…

They weren't Lucy.

No matter how hard they tried, no matter how much of their love he had, Lucy was his _special _best friend. The 'special' was in there for a reason, a reason he had never wanted to give up. And though he loved his friends – his family – with a strength he hadn't even known was possible some years ago, they weren't Lucy. And they never would heal that jagged scar she had left inside him.

"Guys…it's ok." The soft, kind tone, something like a gentle mentor, surprised even Emmet, who had expected to sound more like a burnt record. Even Lucy looked as though she had expected him to stand with his new bodyguards…or maybe that was just fear. The splotches of exhaustion and post-battle weakness had drained the part of him that cared.

A chorus of, "You sure?" and "We can stay," followed almost immediately, but Emmet waved them all off.

After some hesitation and a beady stare at Lucy, Unikitty shrugged, stood up, and motioned to Benny and Sweet. "Ok, but you get five minutes, alright?"

Nodding, Emmet gave Unikitty a small but purposeful smile, and she grinned warmly back. A thousand words, apologies, and thoughts ran between the two, desperate to catch up what had been lost and mend what had been broken.

Their relationship would never be 'perfect' again.

It would be better.

Emmet's trio of protection, as he would have liked to dub them, smiled gently and walked off, not sparing Lucy another glance. A pebble fell down his throat at the sight. What had become of all of them? Where they protected him, they hated her. This wouldn't fly.

_I. Hate. This._

No, not apologizing. Yes, Lucy hated apologizing more than a poorly-built structure and a snotty date, but confusion? Confusion about who she was, what the world would be tomorrow, and _why she still thought Emmet had a cute smile after everything? _No, that was infinitely worse. She could handle physical nuances. The mental ones she couldn't explain plagued her until she couldn't walk.

"E-Emmet, look, this is going to be insanely awkward, but…"

"I forgive you."

She must have dropped her jaw to the core of the earth. "Huh?"

Smiling, smiling just as he had with his real, non-betraying friends, Emmet replied, "I know what you're going to say, and you don't have to."

_But…no, wait – what?_

This was the mental confusion that drove Lucy up a wall.

"How can you do that?" Her face was flushed like the fake blood smeared across the city. More aggression and aggravation drained from her face and seeped into her words than she had planned. "I slapped you, how can you just…forgive me like that? I've been a complete jerk to you for months!"

Months passed across Emmet's face, days skipped, and instances still shone out. With each one, his face reflected the memory: happy, petrified, hopeful, or depressed, and Lucy knew that she had somehow caused each and every one of them.

"If we can't forgive each other… then what's the point?"

Lucy was about to ask for clarification on his last statement, but at the last second, when she found that he feet and dragged her just a foot away from him and her heart was pumping so much blood that her face had no choice but to smile, she decided that she didn't need to.

"…and I'm sorry too. It was a really, _really _stupid thing for me to do, and Unikitty told me all the time not to do it, but I didn't listen." His head hung low, like a criminal about to be prosecuted, and Lucy's left arm grabbed her right wrist from offering any sort of comfort or touch.

Shrugging, Lucy replied, "Well, I guess I forgive you too, that makes us even, right?"

_That stupid smile._

"Lucy?"

They were close.

"Yeah?"

Like, _really _close. And both smiling.

_Stop smiling._

The sheepish, timid tone in his voice gave Lucy a feeling that she was sure was normal. It was probably just an after-thought, a miniscule, momentary emotion, nothing to concern herself over. That didn't mean she had to like it...

"Do you think… do you think we can be friends? Like, real friends?"

Lucy was reckless. She jumped in feet-first without looking and dove where they said no diving. She closed her eyes where one should look carefully and did whatever she could with one hand. Some thought these actions, physical and emotional, would get her killed one day, but she thought they made her life more alive.

This was a cliff-moment. Right before she would dive, shut her eyes, or let go, there was always a moment where she had to decide to do it. Everyone would shout and holler to just be safe, and she would ignore them, take a deep breath, and listen to her gut.

This was a cliff moment, but her gut wasn't saying anything.

"Lucy?" Emmet's breath hitched in his throat, and she could nearly see his heart punching for an escape.

"Yes."

"Huh?"

Swiftly, and with the quickest decision-moment ever, Lucy grabbed Emmet's hand in his, inter-twined their fingers, and grinned. "Yeah, we can be friends."

Lucy changed her mind.

_That _smile was a lot better.


End file.
